Tactics of Evil
by MisstressFanGirl
Summary: What happens when a semi-phsychotic school girl gets trapped in her favorite video game? Havoc ensues as she has to team up with her navigationally-challenged necromancer and Hickey-display of a boyfriend to save the world! please review motivation needed
1. Lesson 1, Zombies Hate Doors

Disclaimers: I dont own any anime, movie, or game... so yeah... on with the fic/

Slumping down against the door, Ran-rans breath was caught in her throat. The adrenaline in her veins that made her legs shake with the need to run did nothing to calm her terrified state of mind. This was deffinently going to scar Ran-ran for the rest of her life. That is, if she survived.

Was this what she got for wishing for more adventure in her life?

Ran-ran, with her petite, but well muscled body, stood no fair chance against the living dead on the other side of the door. As a stray piece of hair fell onto her face, she swiped it back and tucked it behind her ear. Her mid-back length, dark brown hair hung in a tight braid, contrasting her barely tanned skin. The two chocolate brown eyes of hers pierred over the top of her glasses at the dark room.

Sweat beaded on her forehead, and Ran-ran, as she preferred to be called, wiped it away as she thought to herself,

Ok, lets go over whats happening: Stuck in video game, only person for god-knows-how-far that knows what hes doing is busy fighting first significant boss of the game, and IM trapped in a room because Im too damn weak to kill even a group of_ zombies_! Yep, hate to say it Ran-ran, but your life _sucks_. Shit, isnt that necromancer done killing Blood Raven _yet_!

A slamming on the door made Ran-ran jump up and almost drop her glasses.

"Shit!" Ran-ran quietly cried as she looked around at her surroundings, trying to find something to defend herself with. Hm, chair, bookcase, broken barrel. Nope, not one useful thing to use as a weapon.

The weak and roting wood of the door shook as the zombies on the other side struck the barrier again and again and again.

Ran-ran scrambled away from the door and soon found her back against a cold stone wall. Even though she wasnt very religious, Ran-ran began to silently pray to any and all deities that she could think of.

A sudden camotion outside of the door brought Ran-rans attention to the sound of... Battle?

Smiling as she recognized the sounds of bare bones against stone make Ran-ran rush over to the door and swing it open.

"Necromi!" Ran-ran screamed happily as she was faced with a horde of 10 upright, and walking skeletons, some with glowing orbs on there hands but most with weaponry and a little armor, all of whom tuned to look at her, "Its about fuckin time you come to rescue me!"

The skeletons cleared a path to reveal a man, wearing all black with armored leggings, chain mail gloves, and a breastplate that shone green in the dim light as he wielded an intimidating long sword. Necromi stood a good three heads taller than Ran-ran. His skin and hair where an unnatural white, his face was of high cheek bones and sharp angels and thin lips. With icy blue, deep set eyes, the necromancer looked at Ran-ran with much seriousness.

But, like always, Ran-ran simply smiled and tried to contain her giggles.

"So, I take it Blood Ravens finally dead?" Ran-ran inquired as if forgetting that not five minutes ago a rotting piece of wood was the only thing keeping her from being zombie chow.

"And I take it you made some new friends?" Necromi asked sarcastically, smirking, all of the seriousness fading from his features as he resheathed his sword.

Rolling her eyes, Ran-ran smiled and said,

"Whatever dude, lets just go back to the rough encampment!"

"Yes so someone _else_ can babysit the little insane girl!"

"Hey! Im not that bad!"

"Oh really? Have you ever gotten a second opinion?"

"Less talky, more opening of portaly." Ran-ran made a small shooing motion with her hands.

Tickle Tickle

As Ran-ran, Necromi, and his hoard reappeared on the other side of the portal, in the rough encampment, they were immediately greeted by a balding and extremely old man, supporting himself on a wooden staff.

"Hi Cain!" Ran-ran greeted in an overly hyper mannerism as she proceeded to run circles around the elder, and explaining with great excitement the events of the day.

" So, Necromi seems to make a better watcher for you than I first expected." Cain said after Ran-ran collapsed onto a log around the near-by fire in the center of the camp.

"Yep! Not only do I like his sick and slightly twisted brand of humor, but hes ticklish thus meaning fun to poke!" Ran-ran said between heavy breaths, and impish gleam in her eyes and visible on her smile.

Ran-ran turned to find Necromi, and found him talking to the leader of the roughs, Kashya, who was smiling great fully at her friend.

A yawn welled up in Ran-rans throat and she stretched and realized how tired she really was. So, picking herself up, Ran-ran slowly roamed over to her tent, amazed that she was heading to bed even though her watch only read 6pm.


	2. Hammer Time

Author's Note: Sorry for the shortness of the last chapter! I promise all the upcoming chapters will be longer!

Quest for the Magical Hammer... Thingy

"Rise and shine sleepy little nut case!" A semi-sweet voice called through the darkness, waking Ran-ran and making her immediately more aware of her surroundings.

Groaning and sitting up slowly Ran-ran tried to force her eyes to open while her mind began to wake up.

"Shit man," Ran-ran began, " What time is it?"

" Almost sunrise." Necromi, who was crouched next to the sleeping teen, smirking a little.

"What!" Ran-ran's eyes snapped opened and she looked at Necromi, slightly surprised, "Dude, if its not sunrise, then I don't need to be awake!"

But before Ran-ran could try to make an attempt at sleep, Necromi had grabbed her ankle and began dragging her out of the tent, through the camp, and to the fire, all the while Ran-ran flailed her arms and free leg and screamed curses, becoming the morning spectical of the camp.

"Damnit! Let me go! NOW-Oof!" Ran-ran was cut off as she was dropped over a log.

" Ah, good morning Ran-ran, did you sleep well?" Cain greeted as he looked down to Ran-ran, who was sitting up and cleaning her glasses.

"Morning Cain!" Ran-ran stated, traces of her hyperness beginning to surface in her voice. Turning to Necromi, who was sitting next to her, she asked,

"So, what shall we be doing today?"

Necromi looked at Ran-ran and said,

"Well, do you remember Charsi?"

"The blacksmith lady?"

"... Right, the local blacksmith. Anyway, it seems that while the rouges were fleeing the monestary, Charsi left behind her magical hammer thingy. So now we get to go and get it before going to kill Andariel."

Ran-ran almost burst out laughing,

"Magic hammer thingy? Dude, do you mean the Horadric malus?"

"Right right, whatever."

"Besides, how do you just leave something important like that behind?"

"Well... She _is _a natural blond, you know."

At this Ran-ran did burst out laughing, and Necromi could only grin and chuckle.

"Oh, and before I forget..." Necromi pulled out a large, kick ass looking crossbow and handed it to Ran-ran, who had stopped laughing and was busy examining the weapon, "So that we don't have another situation like yesterday."

Slowly Ran-ran smiled and looked from her new weapon to Necromi and said,

"Thanks dude, its kick ass!"

"And so that you have some form of protection."

Necromi took out a gleaming shirt of chainmail, handing it to Ran-ran.

"Sweet!" Ran-ran immedietly put it on.

"Yes, and it also has a strap so that if you get distracted by something shiny, it won't drop and need repairing!"

Ran-ran giggled and slung the strap over her shoulder.

" But you do realize that I have no clue how to use a crossbow, right?" Ran-ran inquired.

"Which is exactly why I woke you up at sunrise." Necromi answered, handing Ran-ran ammo for her new weapon.

Shooting Lessons

"Okay, just concentrate, don't get distracted by anything, not even if its shiny." Necromi quietly instructed Ran-ran as she played sniper with her new crossbow and a hoard of Moon Clan from atop a cottage in the Tamoeh Highlands, just a hundred yards or so away from the fallen monestary.

After practicing for hours, Ran-ran's aim had significantly improved. She had managed to kill a good quantity of quill rat for breakfast (the two had left the camp without eating any of the morning gruel), and was getting better by the shot. Now it was almost noon, and Ran-ran was getting overly bored.

Another Clan fell by Ran-ran's shot and the rest of the group redoubled their efforts to find the hidden attacker.

"Dude, shouldn't we be going to get Charsi's malus back?" Ran-ran asked as she loaded another bolt.

Necromi thought for a second before shrugging.

"I suppose. Besides, you can always get more practice in the monestary."

"Well duh."

The multiple cries brought the two's attention back to the Clans, all of whom layed dead at the feet of the wandering skeletons, who now wandered aimlessly in search of another target.

"Well, lets get going. Wouldn't want to miss our date with that hammer!"

"Dude! Its a malus!"

"Whatever!"

The doors to the Outer Cloister swung open as Necromi, followed by his skeletal horde, and Ran-ran entered, weapons out and ready for a fight.

A slight moment of silence passed before Ran-ran lowered her crossbow and said, as she admired the midevil like architechture of the building,

"Wow... So this is what it looks like from up-close."

Necromi looked at Ran-ran and then at the surrounding building. Indeed, it was a beautiful spectical to be seen, he had to admitt. But at the moment, they had things to kill and quests to complete. So, turning to Ran-ran, Necromi interupted the teenager's thought,

"Ran-ran. C'mon. We have to get going."

Ran-ran nodded silently as she and Necromi walked out onto the courtyard, where a fountain depicting several armed roughs, four facing each direction and one aiming twards the sky, cast in bronze, stood near the waypoint.

"Nifty!" Ran-ran sqealled in joy as she rushed to examine the fountain closer while Necromi lit the blue flames of the waypoint. After a moment more of admiring the watery statue, Ran-ran took up her crossbow again and turned to Necromi.

"Well, lets go get that hammer back!" She said, smiling.

It wasn't until the two had found and killed ever demon in the Outer Cloister and through the first few rooms of the Barracks did Necromi pause to ask,

"Wait, where is the malus suppose to be?"

Ran-ran turned from her position not to many feet away and said,

" Somewhere in the barracks. Suppose to be gaurded by a big creepy smith dude or something. But shhhh, you aren't suppose to know!" Ran-ran giggled mischeviously before following the skeletons as they found a stray demon.

Necromi raised an eyebrow in slight confusion before remembering that his little companion was insane.

'Insane indeed. Says that this whole dimension is a game or something. Well, she is a good shot with the crossbow, I'll give her that.' The necromancer thought, shaking his head as they continued onto the next room.

A long wall of stone block the view of the rest of the room, and the skeletons had already swarmed from behind it and began slaughtering the low level demons. Necromi and Ran-ran stepped out and shot the stray demons with bolts and bone spears. Not a minute later all the demons lay dead.

In one courner of the room their was what seemed to be a small blacksmithing area. Above an avel hung the object of their quest, the horadric malus.

Necromi took a quick look around the room. Nothing happened. He took a step twards the malus. Still nothing.

"Well Ran-ran," Necromi began, looking at Ran-ran, who was several feet away near a torch, "Looks like your blacksmithing demon didn't show."

Then Necromi turned to the malus and as he reached for it, Ran-ran cried out in distress,

"Necromi!"

But before the necromancer could heed the warning, the huge red fist of the demon blacksmith met the back of his head in a blow that knocked Necromi out cold. As Necromi fell, all of his skeleton minions collapsed into piles, and Ran-ran was left alone.

After looking at Necromi for a second longer, the blacksmith turned to his next victim, Ran-ran.

"Shit." Ran-ran muttered before raising her crossbow and firing off a bolt that landed a lucky shot in the eye of the blacksmith.

The demon screamed in and stampeaded forward, and Ran-ran quickly moved out of the path of the demon as she reloaded her weapon and fired again, this time the bolt landed in the back of the demon.

Again the demon charged blindly, flailing his arms and missing Ran-ran, but triping over Necromi's uncontious body and falling, his face landing in the hot coals and fire. Ran-ran took the oportunity and shot the demon in the back of the head several times. Within a few seconds the demon stopped moving and Ran-ran let go of the breath that she wasn't even aware that she was holding.

Ran-ran let her crossbow drop to her side as she rushed over to Necromi's side. Cursing, Ran-ran knelt down and remembered that 1, she had no clue how to use the waypoints or the town portal scrolls, and 2, she had no experience at healing or anything like that. But, she did know that you didn't need any special training for taking a simple healing potion, or even better a potion of rejuvination! So, taking out the vial of violet liquid from her pocket, Ran-ran picked Necromi's head up just a bit and poured the potion down his throat.

Seconds later, Necromi coughed and sat up just a little. Confused, the necromancer looked to Ran-ran for an explination, who only nodded and stated plainly,

"Blacksmith."

Ran-ran gestered to the corpse of the fallen demon while Necromi rubbed the back of his head and got up, with the help of his companion, of course. He was amazed, how did Ran-ran know about the huge, and now dead, demon blacksmith? May be she really wasn't insane...

"Well, lets go back to camp." Ran-ran suggested as she retreaved the malus from above the anvil.

Necromi nodded silently, trying to calm the throbbing migrain that made him want to just die. Thankfully he got the portal open, and Ran-ran had to catch him before he collapsed and help him though to portal.

Before Necromi blacked out again, Ran-ran managed to get them both, and the malus, through the portal.


	3. Danger Be a Puppy

Groaning, Necromi squinted his already closed eyes, the debilitating migrane he had now dulled to just a small throb in the back of his head.

"So do you think he's going to be waking up anytime soon?" Came Ran-ran's voice, followed by the familiar voice of the local healer, Akara.

" He should. But if he doesn't, then well..."

"Then he'll be in coma?"

"Pardon?"

"Ehh, nevermind."

Slowly opening his eyes, Necromi saw the surrounding that he knew as his tent, the ceiling of it inparticular.

'Great, Ran-ran's confusing everyone with her made-up words again' He thought. After a few more seconds of recollectting what had happened, Necromi decided that it would be best to get up. It wasn't like anyone else was going to take up his quest, and he was certin that Ran-ran wasn't going to go kill Andariel by herself!

So, very slowly, Necromi sat up, pushing his elbows at angels under him to support himself.

It was dark in the tent, meaning it was either the middle of the night or pre-dawn morning. The only light that filttered through the slit at the front of the tent seemed to be from the camp fire, signaling that atleast someone was up. Seeing as he had heared Akara and Ran-ran talking not to long ago, Necromi concluded that one of them had to still be up.

Once he was out of the tent and standing up, Necromi stumbled abit and walked shakily for a few steps before getting his footing back. Around the fire Necromi saw Ran-ran, Cain, and Kashya all talking.

"Ran-ran!" Necromi said, and everyone around the fire turned to look at him.

"Necromi!" Ran-ran greeted in her overly hyper manner before rushing to tackle-hug him, "OhmygoIthoughtyouweregoneforgoodandthesmithdudeandthehittingoverof-"

"Necromi, I hope you know that you're running around half nude." Kashya smirked and pointed to Necromi, who looked down at himself as soon as Ran-ran backed off, seeing that indeed, he was only wearing the equevilant to a loin-cloth. Blushing madly, Necromi dashed back to his tent to get his normal cloths on.

When his got back out to the fire, Necromi sat between Ran-ran and Cain, trying to ignore the snikers coming from Kashya.

"So," Necromi began, "How exactly did I end up knocked out?"

Ran-ran was the first to answer,

"Well, remember when I yelled to you, right after all the demons were all dead?"

Necromi nodded and baid her to continue,

"Right well right after that the big demon smith dude came out and knocked you out!" Ran-ran smiled at her explination.

"...And then what happened?" Necromi asked several moments and no continuation of the story later.

"Oh, well the demon went all rawr at me so we had a little fight and then I killed it!"

"Really now? Are you sure you aren't just going insane and just hallucinated that you killed this demon smith?" Asked Necromi, slightly unsure.

Ran-ran, who was fairly annoyed that her friend didn't believe her story.

"I'm not lying, and I didn't hallucinate!"

Necromi held his hands up, not wanting to get into a confrontation with the one who he was suppose to be babysitting.

"Okay, okay. I believe you. Just calm down."

At this point Cain desided to step in.

"Now, you two have more important things to worry about. Such as killing Andariel."

Everyone agreed on this, and after a long conversation that lasted till dawn (they started talking 2 hours before dawn), came up with the plan that Ran-ran refused to agree appon: Necromi and his horde would go and slay Andariel alone, without her.

"Its to dangerous!"

"So is fighting a demonic smith dude, but I did that, and won!" Ran-ran and Necromi argued.

"For the last time Ran-ran, its to dangerous, and you're not going!"

"So!"

"Look." Necromi turned to face the angery teen,"Little girls like you shouldn't worry about having to kill demon bitch's ass. Thats why Cain is going to watch you, and I'm going to go with my minions to kill Andariel."

Growling, Ran-ran pivoted on her heel and walked off, saying,

"Fine! Go! I don't need to save the world. The human race _sucks _anyway!"

Necromi raised an eyebrow and blinked,

"Well, that was simple. Scarily simple... Oh well." Necromi shrugged and approched his tent to gather his equipment and leave.

Here Spider, Spider, Spider

Now that Necromi had a newly made horde, he didn't need to spent so much time concentrating on staying alive. Instead he had time to think, think... and be bored out of his mind.

"Damn, forgot how quiet it could be in a dungeon without Ran-ran." Necromi said to himself as he walked through the jail, trying to find the way up to the Inner Cloister, throwing the occational bone spear at a stray demon, but letting his skeletons take care of the killing for the most part.

Pulling out the rough map that one of the rouges made him, Necromi looked back and forth between his surroundings and the map. He was never very good with navigation.

Necromi sighed in deffeat before picking a random direction and went down the corridore, all of his minions fallowing him in reassuring loyalty.

The hallway they went down lead to a room, filled with corrupted roughs, which they killed, and the room lead to... Nowhere. It was a deadend.

"Damn." Necromi cursed quietly to himself. Tired out from a couple of hours of searching, but to no avail, for the way out of the monestariy's jails, Necromi sat down right where he was and sighed, bored. With Ran-ran around he was never bored, and he had to admit that he did miss the company of the semi-psychotic girl. Heh, now he was regreting letting Cain convince him into making her stay.

Seeing as he wasn't going to be doing any good just sitting, Necromi stood and turned from the dead-end, and retraced his steps.

It is amazing how lost one can be when one's sense of direction is terrible

As Necromi stepped over the corpses of the fallen demonic sisters, he and his horde were unaware that they were being stalked. The shadows that the necromancer passed by silently watched him as he consulted the map, cursing in frustration at it for not showing him the way.

While an almost inaudiable hissing sounded, Necromi fell silent, listening. He could have sworn that he heard footsteps of some kind. It didn't sound like one of bone against bone, but more like what a soft leather would sound like on the jails floor.

Necromi looked around in all directions, he didn't see anything.

The hissing grew louder, and Necromi finally noticed it, looking around him franticly as the hissing bounced off the walls and echoed.

Just as Necromi turned to face the shadows behind him, a large, black and purple thing was flying at his face, but before it could reach, it suddenly was shot down. The spider demon struggled on the floor, it cumpulsed and hissed as its legs febbly kicked at a bolt which protruded from its body. After a moment another shot landed in the demons head, and it ceased moving, finally dead.

Necromi finally noticed someone besides him, and turned to face Ran-ran, with an outstreched crossbow, still aimed at the spider. Necromi raised his hand and asked, highly confused.

"Ran-ran, what exactly are you doing here?"

Smiling, Ran-ran answered,

"You really though that I was going to sit back and let you have all the fun killing Andariel? Plus, I've played through this part of the game enough times to know where I'm going, since your happy ass has shit for navigation skills."

After a moment Necromi smiled and was still confused,

"But, how did you get here?"

"Simple dude, after getting Cain tipsy he tough me how to use the waypoint system, so I pointed to the Black Marsh and kinda killed the demons you missed then went through here, got to the Inner Cloister, you weren't there so I came back down here to find you!"

Necromi looked at Ran-ran in awe.

"Are you saying that _you_ found the way to the Inner Cloister? With out a map!"

After showing Ran-ran his map, she blinked slightly then turned it twice.

"Dude, it was up-side-down."

Feeling utterly stupid, Necromi let Ran-ran lead him to the Inner Cloister, and down through the catacombes, to the lair of the demon queen, Andariel.

Author's Note: Gimme reviews!


	4. Demon Lady Go Boom

As Necromi struck down another demon with his sword, Ran-ran screamed from a courner,

"Dude! Kill the shaman!"

Ran-ran smacked a Dark One that had gotten withen smacking range with her crossbow, then she aimed down and shot it in the head, yet just second later, it rose up, ressurected.

Their current position, just outside of Andariel's throne room in the fourth level of the catacombes. A large horde of dark ones fought them, every skeleton was forced to fight 2 or three of the pesky demons at once. The highlly gaurded shaman ressurecting them whenever one of them fell. This, of course, was very annoying to our heros.

Necromi growled and unleashed a flurry of bone spears, temporarilly leaving the shaman vulnerable. Running over the quickly rising dark ones, Necromi was blocked in, and he dodged a fire ball from the shaman as he drew a dagger and muttered a few inaudiable words and the dagger began to glow a slimy green color. The dagger was thrown and landed square between the eyes of the shaman, killing him instantaniously. All of the surrounding Dark Ones screamed and retreated before even attacking the Necromancer.

Within minutes, Necromi, Ran-ran, and all of the undead minions had slayed the Dark Ones, and this time they stayed dead.

Ran-ran sighed as she looked around at the carnage.

"Well, that was fun." She stated, resisting the urge to poke the coarpses with a stick.

"Indeed," Necromi approched the shaman and jerked his dagger from its skull,"So, shall we finish this quest and kill Andariel?"

Ran-ran made one last check to make sure she had eneough ammo, and that her crossbow's durability was doing okay before they both approched the huge wooden doors.In unison they pushed them open with a hard push.

The skeleton minions rushed forward and began killing the Dark Ones and Zombies while their maker and Ran-ran killed through the battle to where Andariel sat on her throne of bone.

At the sight of the heros, however, the demon queen rose and spoke in a scratchy, demonic tongue.

Necromi smirked and the battle comenced. Andariel and Necromi fought while Ran-ran backed away and landed shots on the demon queen.

As most of the zombies were dead, Necromi converted his skeleton minions to mages and had those that were free attack Andariel.

In an act of frustration, Andariel sent out a poison nova, Necromi was uneffected by it, being immune to the particulare poison, while Ran-ran hid behind a pillar.

Necromi took advantage of Andariel's lowered gaurd and struck, slashing out and peircing the demons mid-section.

As Andariel stood stund, Ran-ran re-emerged from behind the pillar and shot, hitting the demon's head.

Finally Andariel fell, dead.

The skeleton's lowered their hands alight with magic while Ran-ran screamed happily in victory and Necromi smiled and laughed as the girl hugged him.

"Woot! That was fucking awsome! Did you see that! First she was alive, now she's all dead! Ha!"

"Yes Ran-ran, we know. Now lets go back and... Ran-ran? Are you listening?" Necromi inquired as Ran-ran crouched by Andariel's corpse, poking it with a crossbow bolt.

" Uh-huh, bed time, five minutes, gotcha'" Ran-ran was odviessly transfized with the corpse, so Necromi stood there for a moment before clearing his throat. Snapping back to reality, Ran-ran stood up and faced Necromi,

"So, back to camp to inform the general public of the death of the demon lady?"

Necromi laughed slightly as he said yes and summoned a town portal.

Yaaaaaay peanuts

"HEEEY! CAAIN!" Came Ran-ran's voice as she and Necromi emerged though the newly formed portal. The skeleton minions wandered around aimlessly as Cain approched and began to fuss.

"Ran-ran! Where were you? I thought I told you to stay here! And Necromi! Why didn't you send her back here!"

Necromi shruged in his own deffense,

"Don't look at me, she came on her own devices."

Agreeing, Ran-ran said happily,

"Dude! Andariel is dead!"

At the news Cain's additude immedietly changed, and the old man's face lit up, as did every one elses in the camp.

The night wore on, and Ran-ran got both her and Necromi rides on Warriv's caravan to Lut Gholien. They were to leave the next day.

AN: Gimme reviews!


	5. Lesson 2, Sticks are for Poking People

The hot and unforgiving sun beat down on the desert as the caravan made its way across the sandy wastland. The wagons and camels rode forward in the tired haze of mid-day. In an odd way it held a beauty of its own... And Necromi hated it. For the necromancer it was too hot, dry, and inpartucularly, bright.

Necromi growled as he sat on his camel, listening to Cain's tales as the old horodrim rode beside him on a camel of his own. On the other side of him, Ran-ran's camel kept up as its rider ran around in her own overly hyper manner. Occasionaly Necromi would look over to make sure she was still staying in sight.

"Ran-ran. Get back on your camel." Necromi said after Cain had finished another story.

Ran-ran obayed and struggled onto the back of her still moving camel, and before long she sat on its back, cursing her lack of height.

"I hate being short." She stated balancing herself so that she could make sure she wouldn't fall off. "I also hate riding on camels."

At this The animal underneith Ran-ran made an odd groaning sound before she reassured it,

"Nooo, I don't hate _you._ I just hate _riding _on you. Major diffrence."

"So, Ran-ran, any premonition of what we're going to face in Lut Gholien?" Necromi asked, in minor sarcasim and good nature

"Weeeelll..." Ran-ran thought of how to tell her friend some of the events of the next act, without giving away to much detail. "Simply put, much undead, bugs, lotsa tombs, aaand an insane wannabe summoner dude."

Ran-ran giggled at the odd look on Necromi's face.

After a moment of silence, Ran-ran asked,

"Are we there yet?"

Necromi hesitated before answering,

"No."

"How about now?"

"No."

"Now?"

"No."

"Are we there ye-"

"NO!"

"Hehe, just making sure."

Necromi sighed, it was going to be a long, long ride.

On the morning of the next day, the caravan had entered with the sunrise into Lut Gholien finally, after roughly a week traveling across the hot sands.

With a yawn, Ran-ran was once again forced to face the real world.

"Whaaat!" Was her answer as Necromi leaned over and nudged her from his camel.

"Ran-ran, wake up, we're in Lut Gholien."

After a moment Ran-ran slowly opened her tired eyes and looked at her companion.

"Really? Well can't we circle around for five more minutes? I'm tired."

Laughing, Necromi said they couldn't and that she could sleep later as the caravan was lead to a back part of the city. Necromi got off his camel and walked over to look up at Ran-ran, who was still waking up on her's.

"C'mon Ran-ran! Don't make me drag you by the ankels again."

Ran-ran looked down at her friend before rubbing her eyes and putting her glasses on and looking at the surrounding city.

"Wow." Ran-ran began, sounding slightly dissapointed, "I really exspected more from act two... Sheesh. Oh well, there are always the tombs."

"Huh?" Necromi asked, slightly confused at Ran-ran's comment.

"Hm? Oh, nothingness!" Ran-ran laughed and stumbled off her camel, getting help from Necromi as her foot got tangles on the reins.

"Now, lets go kick some mummy ass!" Ran-ran said, raising her crossbow, and Necromi didn't even notice that she had taken it out.

Once again confused, Necromi raised an eye brow, and asked,

"Soo, where did that come from, sleepy head?"

"Eeeehhhh, I'm awake..." Ran-ran's eyes shifted as she tought, "Aaaand... I'm bored!...?"

Necromi chuckled,

"Well, young trigger happy one, lets go get breakfast before searching for things to kill."

After the two had a filling breakfast at the local tavern, the lord of the city, Jarhem came to talk to them about their deffeat of Andariel. For nearly half an hour, Ran-ran struggled with bordom as Necromi, Jarhem, and Cain had talked about 'grown up' thing, as she said. So what was she to do? Simple... Poke people with a stick!

As Ran-ran and Necromi ran deeper into the sewers, Necromi finally stoped and asked, still stunded,

"Why was there an angry mob chasing us!"

Ran-ran herself giggles with jitters as she took up her crossbow,

"I got bord! So I went around poking everyone I came across with a stick! Now pull your sword out, there's a mummy and skeletons and zombies down here!"

Necromi took Ran-ran's advice and took out his sword.

"So, why are we in the sewers again?" Necromi asked, looking around and trying to ignor the smell of fecal matter and death that hung in the air like a fog.

"To go on the first quest!"

"Which would be...?"

"To kill the mummy Radament who's been killing people and eating their flesh and all that wonderfulness."

"Ah. Well, shall we go kill the mummy now?"

"Thought you'd never ask."

With that they were off. Necromi got another horde of minions raised, and Ran-ran forced him into investing some skill into getting a golem. There was much bashing of dead things as they made their way down deeper into the sewers.

The fallen and partially decayed mage wandered around in the closed chamber deep in the sewers, his undead minions occasionally moving and making crunching sounds. The days that had pasted since he was brought back to living-dead status had been filled with eating of fresh flesh and gaining more minions. Unfortunately for the mummy, who currently stood munching on a human arm, he and his army was about to meet their demise at the hands of-

"Ran-ran! Calm down! Its only a splinter!" Necromi tried to coax his companion into letting him see her hand.

"NO! It hurts! I'll get it out myself!" Ran-ran looked at her left palm and examined the inch long splinter she got from falling into a pile of wood.

The dark peice of wood stuck most of the way in her skin at an angel. Sure, it wasn't to deep, but it hurt like a bitch!

"Ran-ran, if you let me see your hand, I_ swear _that it won't hurt." Necromi said sincerly.

Ran-ran hessitated for a second before sighing, lowering her head and held her hand out for Necromi to examine.

Holding her wrist tightly with one hand, Necromi pulled the glove off his other before taking out a vial of bright blue liquid and uncorking it and pouring a bit onto the wounded area.

"COLD!" Ran-ran exclaimed as the liquid came in contact with her skin, and tried to squirm out of Necromi's grip, but he held firm.

Quickly, Necromi worked and drew out a small dagger and cut down the middle of the length of the skin that had the splinter embedded in it. With a little flick of the dagger, Necromi picked the small peice of wood out of Ran-ran's palm and looked over to her. Ran-ran had turned her head so that she wouldn't have to look.

"Ran-ran...?"

"Are you done yet?"

"What do you think?" Necromi smiled as Ran-ran turned to look at the splinter with slightly wider eyes, then at her own palm, that was bleeding just a bit.

"Gasp! I'm bleeding!" Ran-ran stated, not really suprised all that much. When she looked up at Necromi, and he wasn't paying attention, and before she could ask anything, he pointed behind her. Looking, Ran-ran saw a wall of undead, at the back center, Radament's upper body stood out.

"Shit." Ran-ran muttered before she took up her loaded crossbow and then, the battle began.

Necromi's minions rushed forth to face Radament's. The golem that had been summoned earlier knocked down 6 skeletons in one swing, stepping on them and destroying. Ran-ran stayed behind a few ally mage skeletons and shot at the enemies.

Our heros managed to push Radament and his forces back into the room they would have fought each other in in the first place. Eventually Radament's skeleton's became few, and Necromi pushed through the remanining enemies and finished the battle with sword and bone spear.

At last Radament and his minions died, and Ran-ran approched he friend and gave him a hug.

"Alright dude! That was awsome!" then Ran-ran handed Necromi back his chainmail glove that he dropped to work on her hand.

" Well, we better get back to the surface and wash out that wound, because it's deffinently going to get infected if we stay down here much longer." Necromi suggested as he pulled out a scroll of town portal.

"Hold up dude," Ran-ran pointed to a chest that Necromi hadn't noticed before, " Open that and get the book Radament dropped."

Ran-ran was right, the chest was filled with gold and other goodies, plus the book Radament dropped help him with his necromantic skill... And Ran-ran 'convincing' him into getting an iron golem.

AN: Yay! Another chapter done! Now review!


	6. Eek! Blood!

Growling in annoyance, Ran-ran tried to ignore her friend's annoying whines as they walked across the hot desert.

After making the city un-mad at them by spreading the news of Radament's death, Cain sent them off on a quest to retrieve the items needed to make a horadric staff. At first Necromi was all-for the new quest, but then after a few minutes of walking in the hot sun, he had begun complaining. But kept walking, the urge the finish the quest still keeping him going.

"I don't see why we had to start this quest in the middle of the day! Its just the same as night!" Necromi ranted on, cursing the sun and everything under it.

Ran-ran kept her mouth shut and sighed, she didn't feel like mentioning that it was _Necromi's_ idea to start the quest right away.

"What do we need this cube for anyway?"

Again Ran-ran sighed. This was getting really old for her, really fast. She was close to simpley smacking her necromancer friend and taking the map and-

Ran-ran blinked as she relized that Necromi was currently leading them all.

" Ehh, Necromi?"

"What Ran-ran?"

"Do you have a map?"

"Yes."

"Good. Gimme." Ran-ran took the map and they all stopped. Glancing back and forth between the surroundings and the map, Ran-ran sighed and turned to her left.

"_This_ is the way to the Halls of the Dead. C'mon!" Ran-ran stated, smiling slightly.

Necromi grummbled and reluctently followed, his pride injured.

Yeah... Woosh

After another hour of wandering around, killing monsters, and Necromi's painful ranting, our heros finally approched the Halls of the Dead. As they stepped into its shadow, Necromi's whining suddenly stopped as he submered himself in the wonderful lack of light.

"Well, lets go." Necromi stated calmly as he and Ran-ran entered the dark entrance.

When the two entered the hall, they were hit with the pungent smell of death.

"Gah! Dude! It stinks down here!" Ran-ran complained and covered her nose as her eyes watered slightly.

Necromi wrinkled his nose,

"Its almost as bad as some places in the monestary. But still no reason not to continue."

Ran-ran shruged and took up her crossbow as they continued down the corridor. In time they came to a conjunction in their path. The two looked down both ways before Ran-ran asked,

"Soo... Left or right?"

Necromi crossed his arms and stated,

"Either way, they could simply be dead ends. Or one way may be filled with traps. Its risky taking either way. We could have a 50/50 chance of dying. But then again, they both could be either perfectly safe, or be filled with traps."

Ran-ran blinked a bit befor asking,

"Sooo... Left or right?"

Necromi looked at her, then both ways before looking back at her and saying,

"Okay, left."

"Why not right?"

"Well, I don't know."

Ran-ran sighed.

"How about this. _You _go left, and _I_ go right?"

Necromi shook his head and stated,

"No! Cain put me in charge of making sure you stay alive."

"Then lemme borrow some skeletons! Cause either way I'm going right." Ran-ran turned and sprinted down the right path.

Knowing very well he wouldn't be able to catch her, Necromi sent two skeletons, one a mage another a worrior, to protect Ran-ran before turning and walking down the left corridor.

Yaaaa, Cube!

Necromi smiled as he picked up the Horadric Cube from the chest. He had been right! Ha! Take that, crappy navigation! But as he was about to gloat and say, 'I told you so!' Necromi relized that Ran-ran wasn't there, and neither were the majority of his skeletons! So, quickly, he raised up a new army of minions from the surrounding corpses.

"Well, might as well go get Ran-ran. Hopefully she's just scared out of her mind and is whimpering in a courner being protected by the skeletons."

So turning around, Necromi started back, retracing his steps as best he could. Before he could take many steps, he stopped, relizing that the two skeletons he had sent to protect Ran-ran were dead. In minor panick, Necromi picked up his pace and began running.

Uh-oh, blood!

Ran-ran clenched her teeth so tight, her head hurt as she pulled out the blade of a mummy from her left sholder. As she tried to regulate her breathing, she slumped down against a wall. The two skeletons Necromi lent her had been destroyed, and she herself had barley made it out of the battle.

Looking down at the blade, Ran-ran saw that it had a greenish sheen to it.

'Shit, poisoned.' Ran-ran thought and shivered, suddenly cold. She whiped her forhead and felt the sweat that was gathering on it. The blood kept flowing profusly from her sholder wound, and Ran-ran could have sworn that she heard foot steps.

"Shit, well if they think I'm going without a fight, they've got another thing coming!" Ran-ran said fiercely to herself as she picked up her crossbow, and tried to get up, finding that she was too weak too.

"Ran-ran!" Came Necromi's voice.

The room began to spin, and Ran-ran closed her eyes so that her newfound neasuea wouldn't force her stomach to evacuate. Her crossbow dropped to the floor with a clatter.

Necromi knelt by Ran-ran as she shivered again.

"Ran-ran, what happened?" Necromi asked, concern in his voice and etched in his features as he noticed he sholder wound.

There was no answer from Ran-ran, she wrapped her arms around herself. Necromi took off a glove and felt her forhead. It was hot, very, very hot.

"High fever." Necromi muttered to himself as he opened a town portal and picked Ran-ran up gently.

Mmm, Pillow

Groaning, Ran-ran slowly became more and more aware of her senses. Her whole body, espesially her sholder, hurt, and she was surrounded by two things: softness and darkness. As she opened her eyes, Ran-ran was still surrounded by the dark.

For a moment she wandered if she was dead.

Suddenly a bright light illuminated blindingly from her right, and Ran-ran turned to see Necromi walking in carrying a lanturn.

"Ran-ran, you're awake!" Necromi said, sounding relieved.

"Uhh, yeah, guess I am. What time is it?" Ran-ran asked, still tired, but waking up reasonably quickly. She sat up and looked around at her surroundings, seeing she was in a bed in the inn. It was scarcly furnished, just a bed, a night table, a window, with the curtins, and a dresser.

"Around noon."

"Noon?"

Before Ran-ran got a verbal response, Necromi chuckled and shook his head at her response.

"Yes, seems there's an eclipse."

Ran-ran sighed and muttered to herself,

"Oh, _that_ part of the game."

Necromi ignored what she said and felt her forhead.

"Well your fever broke."

"Yeah... So how long was I out?"

"Oh not long, just a couple of days."

Ran-ran was about to exclaime something but found better questions to ask,

"Did you get the cube?"

"That and the staff."

"Yay!" Ran-ran smiled and streched. "So, now what?"

Necromi set the lanturn down on the night table and said,

"Well, now I should go and get the snake amulet."

"Great, lets go!" Ran-ran moved to throw the covers off when Necromi suddenly interjected.

"No. Ran-ran I said that _I_ was going to get the snake amulet, not _us._"

Ran-ran raised an eyebrow in suspision.

"So, what are you trying to say?"

"That you're staying here."

"What? No! Its boring here!"

"You're recovering from a sever poisoning and loss of blood, you need rest. Lots of rest!"

"Do not! I'm perfectly fine!"

"No, Ran-ran, you have a hole in your sholder."

"Do not!... Oh, wait, yeah, you're right."

Necromi sighed and took out a long coil of rope.

"Eh, Necromi? Whats the rope for?" Ran-ran asked, slightly fearful.

"So that _this _time, you won't follow!"

No, Nota Bondage Moment

Cain watched as Necromi walked out from the inn smiling.

"So I take it you managed to convince Ran-ran to stay?" The old sage asked.

"Nope. Just tied her up."

"Necromi!"

"What! I was weary of her wound. But when she does get out, give her these." Necromi took out two curved peices of shoulder armor with bolted leather straps.

Cain sighed and agreed as the necromancer took off to lift the eclipse form the sky.


	7. Not a Good Time for the Giggles

Padding back and forth across the docks, Ran-ran complained, having gotten out of her bonds and getting her sholder gaurds from Necromi from Cain. It was a thoughtful present, she had to admitt, she'd have to get him something in return.

"But no amount of gifts with rectify the fact that he just _left_!" Ran-ran said fiercely to Meshief, who was sitting cross-legged on the egde of his boat, smoking a long pipe and listening to her, being the only person who wasn't still sore about her poking him randomlywith a stick. Hell, he thought the whole fieasco was helarious!

"Well," He began,"He is right about one thing, you were seriously hurt. Should've seen yourself, pale an' bloody. Sholder was a compleat mess. An' Necromi was a sight, he was so worried that he didn't leave your bedside till you got some color back and were so full of antidot you were talking in yer sleep, supposudly."

"Really?" Ran-ran asked, slightly amazed.

"Yes indeed. He's only making you stay cause he cares about you."

"Is that the reason he tied me up?"

Meshief nearly choked on smoke,

"Tied up! So thats why you took so long gettin' out a' bed!" Meshief laughed while Ran-ran sat down and sighed.

Suddenly she lifted her head and smiled,

"I've got an idea! I've earned a fair share of gold of my own, I'll go buy Necromi a kick-ass bone shield! Then I'll go to the Arcain Sanctuary and prove that I'm perfectly fine!" Ran-ran said and bounced up, taking up her crossbow and racing off for the market.

Silently, Meshief took a hit from his pipe and blew a few smoke rings.

"That girl is going to kill her and that necromancer one day, with all that insanity in her head." He said to himself as he watched Ran-ran dissapear into the ruch of people in the market.

In the Desert, W00t

Elsewhere, Necromi approched the Alter of the Sun, deep in the lair of the Claw Vipers, many of them laying dead around him, with his almost full-

_Crrrrrruushhhh_

Well, _now _full horde of skeletons, and one iron golem, wandered, making sure the enemies stayed the way they were suppose to, dead.

The sandstone table had many arcane ruins etched into it, among other things. But Necromi hardly stopped to noticed, and started bashing the alter several times until it crummbled under the force of his blows. Out of the rubble Necromi grabbed the Snake Amulet, blowing the dust off of it and put it in his pocket.

Through some mysterious hole in the ceiling, a ray of pure sunlight shone down apon the ruined alter, its brightness making Necromi squint.

"Damn, and I was enjoying the dark, too."

Shrugging off his longing for the safe, inky darkness, Necromi summoned a portal and stepped through, looking forward to greeting the probably aggitated Ran-ran.

Once on the other side, Necromi and his horde made their way over to Cain, where he asked,

"Cain! Where's Ran-ran?"

The old mage pointed him in the direction of Meshief, who was still smoking on his pipe.

"Hey, Meshief!" Necromi began, looking around, but seeing no Ran-ran, "Do you know where Ran-ran is?"

Meshief banged the tobaco out of the pipe and said,

"Aye, the little insane one went to go get you a gift and to go kill some demonies in thheee Arcane Sanctuary...? At least I-"

"The what! Shit! Cain warned me about that place!"

Necromi turned and bolted down the street twards the palace.

After making several unseccessful attemps at convincing Jahrem to let her into the palace, even after she shocked the lord with telling him of the harem's deaths and such, Ran-ran eventually gave up on getting in the palace the front way. Fortunately, she was fairly good at climbing, so she got in through an open window.

Now she was down in the celler, sniping down demons and drinking an excess amount of specially made potions from Lycander, suppose to help heal her sholder wound faster. A bone shield that she got for Necromi was strapped to her back, providing a small amount of protection incase she was hit from behind.

Finally, after about three hours after she had come down there, Ran-ran reached the portal to the Arcane Sanctuary. The two white spikes that protruded from the ground came to touch and cross just a bit at the top. Sitting atop them was a spiked circle... thingy.

"Cool! Portal!" Ran-ran said hyperly, about to jump about in victory, but then she stopped. She had no clue how to open a portal!

Growling in annoyance, Ran-ran glared at the portal while thinking of ways to open it. She tried talking to it, saying special words, even giving the damn things hugs, but to no avail.

After a trial and error period that lasted roghly half an hour, Ran-ran yelled at the portal,

"Why won't you open!"

The portal only stood, silent and still.

Ran-ran growled again, approched the portal, and kicked it with all her might. She soon regreted the decision, hopping back till she tumbled and fell on her rumb. Ran-ran held her injured foot, giving up hope and about to simply give up and sulk in the silence and wait until Necromi found her.

A sudden creaking sound brought Ran-ran's attention back to the portal, where atop it the spikey circluar object had begun to spin. Slowly at first, but then it began to pick up speed and when Ran-ran looked down slightly, she saw that a blood red spot was forming. It grew as the circular spike spun faster and faster, untill finally Ran-ran found herself looking at the fully formed portal.

"Yosh." Ran-ran stated to herself slowly, picking herself up and approching the portal. Just as she was about to rush into the portal, a faint echoing caught her attention. Stopping, Ran-ran turned at the fairly familiar voice as it got louder.

"Necromi!" Ran-ran finally relized who it was.

"Ran-ran!" Necromi's voice called, getting closer.

"Uhh, wtf!"

"Don't go into the Arcane Sanctuary!"

"Why not?"

"Because it dangerous!"

"Well DUH!"

Ran-ran hessitated a bit longer, rialed up for a fight, she ran through the red gate.

"Ran-ran!" Necromi asked, but recieved no answer. "Ran-ran! RAN-RAN!"

Quickly he raced through the basement, ignoring the fact that he was leaving his minions behind in the first place, and not really caring enough to stop.

Eventually Necromi got to the open portal, with no Ran-ran.

"Shit!" Necromi cursed before looking up at the portal, and without a second thought, ran through the portal.

When Necromi got to the other side of the portal, he looked in awe at the new dimension.

"Amazing..." He said quietly to himself, not noticing that all of his minions were now right by him.

The portal lead directly down by two set of stairs lead to a platform, which had a waypoint on it. The floor was a pure white marble, and four pathways streched in diffrent directions. Off in the distance Necromi could see many more platforms, stairs, and what seemed to be monsters.

As Necromi walked down a path to his left, he thought of the current situation,

"Alright. Have to go kill old possest mage, but first I have to find out which on of the tombs in the Canyon is the true tomb, which is why I would have to come here in the first place, Diablo himself is probably looking to reunite him and his brothers, and the cherry on top of all of this is that the little insane girl I am suppose to be watching over and protecting, has run off on her own! And why? To prove that she can kill a few demons!"

Slowly Necromi noticed how frequent dead bodies of demon goat men begining to appear, ecspecially since he could barely walk through the pile of them.

"What the hell?" Necromi said, slightly annoyed, kicking the corpses off the edge of the walkway. "Ran-ran must have come this way..."

Necromi pulled out a bolt from a fallen demon, concluding that if he followed the trail of carnage long enough, he'd find Ran-ran.

Hmm... Ice Cream...!

Trying to hold in her giggling as best she could, Ran-ran shifted slightly in her bonds. Yep, once again she was tied up, and she'd been there for around and hour and a half. Only this time it was by enemy forces. But then what why was she giggling? Simple, before her stood the great and powerful mage, Horozon, who created the Arcane Sanctuary and enslaved hundreds of demons... Or, well, the person who was pretending to be the summoner. A total nutcase, he was.

"Like rivers your blood shall flow young one! With your soul I shall become more- WHY are you laughing!" Horozon's impersonater questioned Ran-ran, who was rolling on the floor, still tied up.

'Great, first all I had to worry about was getting caught sneaking out to see my boyfriend and Christmas break being just a few weeks away, now I have to deal with insane wannabe summoner dudes? Doesn't he know his pants are half-way down!' Ran-ran thought to herself, trying to control her laughter and, again, failing miserably.

"Stop laughing! STOP LAUGHING!" Horozon's wannabe screamed, holding the sides of his head and causing his demon minions to look at him strangely.

That is, before a huge bone spear shot through Horozon's wannabe chest. Looking down at the bloody hole, the impersonater barely murmmered anything before falling over in a pile of dead.

Suddenly the demons fell into a frenzie of battle. Ran-ran had stopped laughing and was now staring in minor entertainment as the demons were killed enough for her to look through the crowed to see the bleach-white bones of skeletons and watch as the familiar face of Necromi worked his way through the battle over to her.

"Ran-ran!" Necromi said, his voice held a mix of annoyment and relief as he knelt down and cut her out of the ropes with a dagger.

"What happened? Are you ok? Why did you run off like that!" Necromi asked questioned as the two stood up.

While Ran-ran waited for her necromancer to calm down, she collected her crossbow and armor, which had been taken off after her being captured. Finally, Necromi had settled down enough for her to answer his questions

"Dude, I'm fine. Now c'mon! Lets go kill stuff!" Ran-ran said, offering no further explination as she approched a thick book and opened it to a completely random page someplace in the center of the book. Suddenly a red portal opened in to center of a circle of symbols set in the center of the platform.

Necromi looked causously from the portal to Ran-ran.

"You knew that was going to happen, didn't you?" Necromi asked, wryly.

Ran-ran's only response was a smile as she grabbed her friend and they both dissapeared through the portal to the.

Oooo, Portal

As the two appeared in the Canyon of the Magi, Necromi looked about the large canyon, with is broken statues and high cliff tops that had to be no more than 2 miles all around them.

"Oooo." Ran-ran said, looking at the beautiful surrounding sceanery. The shadows were long, due to it being so late in the day, about 5:30 pm.

Necromi turned toRan-ran and said,

"Well, lets go kill something _big_."

Smiling Ran-ran nodded and took up her crossbow.


	8. Meet Tyreal, Arch Angel of Great Echoy V

The sun had long since set by the time Necromi and Ran-ran walked out of the latest false tomb they had comepletely cleared out.

"So, what was the point of going through all these tombs if we knew which one was the real one?" Ran-ran asked, fairly pissed off at her necromancer.

"For the gold." Necromi answered with a smirk.

Growling Ran-ran stopped where she was and said,

"We should really make camp dude, we've been running around and fighting all day!"

Necromi stopped a few feet away and said,

"Well we have to get to Tal'Rasha's tomb before Diablo does!"

"Fine. There's more than one way to skin a cat." Ran-ran said under her breath as she loaded a blow gun, knowing very well that Diablo and Baal had more then likely escaped their grasp. Oh well, they could always get them later. But in the mean time Ran-ran was in desprate need of rest. And even though he wouldn't admitt it, Necromi was begining to suffer the effects of fatigue.

"What was that?" Necromi asked, totaly missing what she had ment."

"Nighty night." Ran-ran muttered as she blew at one end and out the other the dart, covered in a tranquilizer, landed on the back of Necromi's neck.

Nearly as soon as he reached to pull the dart from his neck, Necromi fell forward, asleep.

"Yosh!" Ran-ran stated, and began to set up camp.

Hours later, Necromi sat up, and yelling,

"Ahhhhhh! Bunnies!"

Ran-ran, who was on the other side of the fire, looked at Necromi oddly for a second before lifting her bolt and at the golden-brown marshmellow that had been roasting on its end.

"Oy." She said, and Necromi's head snapped to look at her.

Necromi sighed and whiped his face, which was covered in sweat.

"Ran-ran, shouldn't we be, I dunno, killing Diablo and stoping the reuniting of the three?" Necromi asked, moving to sit facing the fire.

"They're already gone. Don't worry, we'll catch up with them after we deffet Deriel and go to Kurast." Ran-ran said as if it was a casual problem.

Necromi looked at Ran-ran with an eyebrow raised.

"So how exactly did we get from walking to camp fire?" He finally asked after a moment of uncomfortable silence.

"I tranqulized ya. You looked in need of sleep anyway."

"Heh, I figured that much... Wait, did you say we had to go to Kurast!" Necromi's eyes went wide and his voice seemed to fill with something alike to hope.

"Uh, yeah, you're just relizing?" Ran-ran wandered why her necromancer was so agitated about the east.

"Well good! That gives me a chance to stop by and visit my family!" Necromi smiled and yawned tiredly. By the position of the moon, he figured to be about two or three in the morning.

"Have you slept at all?" Necromi asked, watching as Ran-ran swayed slightly, her eyelids seeming to grow heavy.

"Not really," which for Ran-ran usually ment no, "I've been keeping watch for demons and such, making sure you didn't get ass raped in your sleep." She finished her comment of with a cat-like smile.

"Well, I'll keep watch, you should get some sleep, if we're to kill what ever resides in Tal'Rasha's tomb now." stated Necromi gesturing for Ran-ran to get some rest.

"Okay dude. Wake me up at sunrise." Ran-ran said as a yawn overtook her mouth and she laid down, turning away from the offensive light of the fire.

When morning finally did come, which seemed like for ever to our necromancer, Necromi watched the sun rise slowly. He had long ago smuthered the fire, since the wind blew smoke in his face and kept interrupting his meditaton, and thought that he should be waking his young companion up soon.

"Ran-ran." Necromi said.

Ran-ran didn't stirr

"Ran-ran." He said, a little louder.

Finally she rolled over and creacked open her eyes slightly, groaning tiredly.

"Hmmm?" The sleepy girl asked, confused.

"Wakey wakey, time to go kill stuff." Necromi said, glancing at the sun, by its position he guessed it was about 7 am.

Ran-ran sat up and looked around. In the morning sun the desert surroundings were bathed in a warm orange light. What a contrast they were to the dark and dank tombs she spent hours in the previous day. Grudgingly, Ran-ran forced herself to stand up and go find a place to use as a bathroom.

Once all the demons in Tal'Rasha's tomb were killed, Necromi looked around and said,

"Well, we checked everywhere, so where's Tal'Rasha suppose to be?"

Ran-ran, on the otherhand, looked around the tomb and grabbed her friend, leading them through the part of the tomb knowingly. At last they came to a large room, in the center of it, there was a pedastil which had a sharp indention in its center.

"Now how did I miss that...?" Necromi wandered as he took out the now comepletely put together horadric staff and put it in the hole in the pedistal.

One by one the symbols around the pedistal lit up, their light focusing on the staff, which was glowing more and more with each passing second. Suddenly, the room began to shake, and Necromi and Ran-ran had to hold onto the iron golem to keep standing. A streak of light hit one side of the wall, and it crummbled, forming a large hole.

"Nifty." Ran-ran said smiling as she let go of the iron golem and stood on her own, as did Necromi.

Both looked twards the newly formed hole in the wall, and in a silent agreement, began to approch it. That is, untill a huge, thick claw reached out of the hole and scraped along the ground, draging out of the hole, a huge demonic maggot creature.

"Looking for Baal?" The maggot asked in a scratchy voice that made our heros cring.

Ran-ran reconized the demon from the many times she had played through this perticular part of Diablo II as Deriel.

"Meep." She whispered as the demon looked at her with his fully black eyes.

Necromi stepped to stand between the demon and his friend, his sword and bone shield, which Ran-ran finally got around to giving him, raised in an offensive manner.

The demon looked down at Necromi and seemed to smile in a sick way. Then, in a blindingly fast move, Deriel raised a claw and swung at the Necromancer, only to fine he hit the newly summoned bone shield that surrounded Necromi.

In an attack of his own, Necromi swung at Deriels claw, slicing the tip clean off. The demon screamed a horrible scream as he was hit again again with bolt, magic, bone spear, and worrior skeleton stikes.

A terrible stench built up as the continuous bonbardments cut deep into Deriel's flesh, eviserating his body as the demon tried in vain to fight off the skeletons.

The iron golem, which was created by a dagger of hig poison consentration, hit Deriel again and again with its spiked fist, sending a large quantity of poison into the demon.

Ran-ran concentrated most of her attacks in Deriel's head region, and before long the demon's head looked like a bloody and twisted pin cushion that might be used in a sewing club in Hell. That is, if Hell had a sewing club.

With both his eyes inflicted with multiple bolt shots, the majority of his guts spilt on the floor, and a necromancer constantly throwing the excrusiatingly painful bone spears through him, Deriel fell, nearing death.

"Yosh!" Ran-ran said in victory as she gave Necromi a big hug.

"Indeed, now lets go see whats in that tomb."

Our heros carefully, but not to carefully, stepped over Deriel's now-dead corpse and into the dark hole. Once they were in the tomb, they saw it was dimly lit by radomly placed torches. In one courner was plenty of gold, which the two heros split between them, and other nifty goodies that were put away to be identified and perhaps sold at a later time.

"So, now that that's done, now what?" Necromi asked, turning to his companion, who was poking Deriel's coarps with a stick.

Sighing, Necromi turned fullt to Ran-ran and said,

"Ran-ran don't touch it, you'll get sick."

"Will not," Ran-ran stated as she stood up and turned, "And I thik this would be a wonderful time for _random exploration!_" Ran-ran pointed to the roof in an overly dramatic gestur.

"Oo! And this place is so simple, even _you _get lost!" Ran-ran stated with a smile, walking past her necromancer, deeper into the tomb.

"And what is _that_ suppose to mean?" Necromi and his horde followed her as she answered the question.

"It means your since of direction is crappy as Hell!" Ran-ran smiled and let her friend catch up with her.

As they walked deeper into the tomb, they came apon a large cavern, in the center it had a great stone pillar, broken chains hanging down from it. The pillar and chains were surrounded by a moat of lava, but one could reach the island by a bridge. Currently blocking the bridge, however was one specific character. To some players he is the arch angel of something-the-author-is-to-lazy-to-remember, to others he is that one annoying angel NPC, but to us, and our heros, we shall call him Tyreal.

When Tyreal noticed that the two were there, he spoke, in hsi great and echoy voice,

"So, you are the two humans who've deffeted Andariel, and now, Deriel, I take it?"

Necromi rose an eyebrow and said,

"Yes, and you would be...?"

"He is being ze arch angel, Tyreal!" Ran-ran said dramaticly, pointing at the angel, being in one of her slightly more hyper and up-beat moods.

The angel only chuckled and said,

"The girl is right. But to get right to the point. Diablo and Baal have been reunited. You two are the only humans who have the potential to stop the demons before they can get to Kurast and meet up with their brother, Mephisto.."

Ran-ran herself ignored the angel's speech, having heared it plenty of times in her playing of Diablo II. Within three minutes her bordom had reached its limits and she cried out,

"Well duh! And the more time we wast in the tomb is more time Baal and Diablo have on us!"

"The girl is right," Tyreal said as he opened a portal, "You two should really be going."

Necromi nodded and was pulled through the portal by a very bord Ran-ran.

On the other side, they were greeted by an angry looking Cain.

"Damnit Ran-ran! I told you to stay put!" The old scribe complained before the two heros got to say anything.

"Big whoop." Ran-ran stated, jumping around and just being hyper.

"Right, Cain, bad news. Diablo and Baal are loose apon the world, so now we must go to Kurast to make sure the don't reunite with Mephisto." Necromi said, his voice expressing the direness of the situation.

"_What_!" Cain yelled, his eyes wide, "Well me must go to get supplies and leave immedietly!"

"I'll go tell Meshief to prep the boat!" Ran-ran said, sprinting off hyperly to find the captian.

Seconds later...

"OY! Meshief!" Ran-ran yelled as she skided to a stop at the edge of the dock.

" Ahoy, Ran-ran! Good t' see yer still alive!" Meshief greeted, waving to the little insane girl.

"Dude! Do you remember that you said that you'd promised to take me and Necromi to Kurast when the whole threat thingy was over?"

"Yes, I believe I do!"

"Good! Lets go!"

"What? Ya mean Baal an' Diablo are dead?"

"No, but evil has been all cleared from here and now we need to go to Kurast and kill evilness there!" Ran-ran spoke so fast that Meshief needed her to say her message again, only much slower.

"Right well seeya bye!" Ran-ran turned and sprinted back to her friend.

Evil was gone from the seaport city of Lut Gholien. But then again, the three prime evils were about to be reunited to bring Hell to Earth. Either way, many a drinker got plastered to the extreme that night, begining of the apocolypse or not.


	9. Ah, That New Character Smell

Meshief's boat traveled across the sea for over a week before it finally reached its destination at the dock of Kurast.Nothing much happened to keep our heros preoccupied on the trip. Well, other than Necromi getting sea-sick and Ran-ran learning how to tie people up in more nifty ways. As fair for the trip over, Necromi had put his minions to work doing all kinds of jobs around the boat.

As the boat finally pulled into dock, Ran-ran and Necromi hunched over the side of the boat and observed the sights.

"Oh my..." Necromi whispered as he looked at the broken remains of the city that was just barely struggling to stay alive. The only thing keeping the demons away from what was left of the once great city was a weakening magical barrier. He didn't seem as destraut as he did amazed, "This place really has gone to Hell quickly. When I left several years ago it wasn't this bad."

"Yeah... C'mon! Lets go shopping and get new armorfulness and stuff!" Ran-ran said in and up-beat manner, the boat fully docked, she grabbed her friend and left to get them aquanted with the characters she knew would be usefull.

On their way to get better equipment, however, our heros were held up by one tiny little problem. Minding their own bussiness, just walking, a voice suddenly called out,

"You there! Necromancer and girl! _Stooooop_!!"

Now our heros naturally assumed that they were the only necromancer and little girl traveling together, so they paused, turned, and the horde of skeletons (and one iron golem) parted so that they could see a man, dark skin, in shining silver plate armor with a golden cross on the front. His sword was out and pointing at the two in a hostile way.

Ran-ran blinked and immedietly reconized the man as a paladin. Necromi knew this two and raised and eyebrow, crossed his arms, and waited for the man to state what exactly he wanted.

"Well....?" Necromi asked, unsure of what the paladin wanted.

"Draw thy sword and fight!!!" The paladin yelled, making Ran-ran jumped in suprise at his sudden outburst.

"Oh, lemme guess, holy quest to kill something of true evil and foulness." Asked Necromi, his voice hinting bordom.

The paladin nodded and said,

"The priest at my order said there is no _fouler_ a creature on this plane of existance than a necromancer!"

Ran-ran almost burst out laughing, but managed to stifle them to minor giggles.

"And _what_ may I ask, is so funny?!" The paladin turned his attention to Ran-ran.

That was it, Ran-ran lost it, she fell of the ground and laughed and laughed and laughed. All of this provoked not only objections and insults from the paladin, but a smirk and a shooken head from Necromi.

After a while, and since a bit of a crowed had begun to form around them, Necromi helped stand his companion up and said,

"Well ignorant paladin, I'd like to stay and chat some more about your lack of knowledge of the world, but me and Ran-ran have evil to slay. Good by-"

"No!!! You can't be allowed to run around in the jungle alone! I shall go and protect you! For the sake of the child!" The paladin said and approched them.

"Heh, fine, but if you die its _your_ fault." Necromi said.

"I can take care of myself perfectly fine!" Ran-ran said, still smiling broadly as she raised her crossbow.

So the three ventured twards the outskirts of the broken city, into the demon infested jungle.

Currently our two heros, and one annoying paladin,who asked to be called Mark, walked through the surrounding jungle outside of the Kurast dock side. Mark kept preaching to the two about 'not finding the light' while Ran-ran tried to keep Necromi from killing Mark. Unfortunately for the sake of her nerves, she succeded

Eventually they reached what seemed like the ruins of a small village. The only problem, was that everything was covered in layers and layers of what seemed like spider's webbing. Ran-ran immedietly reconized the area they were in and tried her hardest not to jump at ever little thing. When a small masquito landed on her skin, she flipped out and swated the offensive bug away.

"Hey, you guys, come see this!" Mark called, standing behind a piece of broken wall. He was looking down, at what exactly was being blocked off by the wall.

When Necromi and Ran-ran approched, they saw that Mark was looking into a large hole that looked to have more of the spider silk spiraling into it, and the hole itself looked to be some kind of large burrow.

Cringing, Ran-ran stood and put a hand on Mark and Necromi's sholders.

"Well, you guys better get going and stuff!" She said, not wanting to go in herself.

When the guys were half way into the cavern, and Ran-ran wasn't following, Necromi turned to look at her waving good bye.

"Well, aren't you coming?" Necromi asked.

"Nah, you two need some real bonding time!" Ran-ran said with a smile, "Plus, I'm arachnaphobic, so being in a cave full of spiders wouldn't be good for my brain."

Necromi sighed and turned back to the hole with Mark.

"For the light!!" Mark suddenly screamed, thrusting his sword to the sky in a dramatic gesture. Then he turned to Necromi, sword still raised dramaticly and all.

"... What?" Necromi asked after a second.

"Well aren't you going to have a battle cry for something?"

"Um, no."

"Oh c'mon! Necromancers have to have _something_ important to them!"

"No Mark, I'm not going to do it."

"but its fuuuuun!!!"

"Fine! Sheesh." Necromi drew his sword and, very inenthusiasticly, raised it and said, in a monoton voice, "For the... uhm....The Rum."

Ran-ran shook her head and settled her self on a low tree branch while Mark and Necromi, and the skeleton horde finally dissapeared into the dark hole.

"Bleh. Hate spiders." Ran-ran said to her self as she turned and leaned against the trunk of the tree. Sighing, Ran-ran let her mind float and think. For several minutes her mind remininscenced about how much she missed her home, and her computer. But what she mainly thought about was her current significant other, or, well, more precicly, her boy friend.

_Sigh_.

Great, now she was getting depressed. Oh well, she thought, might as well day-dream. So that's exactly what she did, slipping into whatever fantasy world her mind created for times when she was bored, depressed, or when her teachers were lechturing. Slowly she slipped deeper and deeper into the day dream. Ran-ran was able to ignor all that went on around her. Her eyes were open, but they weren't seeing. This is probobly the reason she didn't register a certin call from a very familiar voice.

"Oy!! Sqeak!!"

The walls of the spider cavern were moist and had layers of spider webbing on them, just like in the abandon village they saw earlier, only, well it was darker and danker.

"My god..." Mark murmmered a little prayer as he and Necromi walked deeper into the cavern.

"Whats the problem? Never been in a cave before?" Necromi asked, smirking slightly at the paladin's inexperience.

"Yes I have! Its just that this place reaks of death and evil!" Mark deffended himself, reminding Necromi of a schoolboy. But then again, the paladin was right, the cavern they were in did smell like rotting meat, dried blood, and something else he couldn't identify.

Returning his attention back to the cave, Necromi glared into the darkness, as if waiting for something to attack. And something did.

Necromi stopped suddenly as the shadows shifted and a scammpering sound was heard. Sounding something alike to rats. The sun light that managed to get in through the entrance shone off something in the shadows. Something big.

In a blink of an eye, something pounced, and before Necromi knew what was happening, something black flew past him and landed on Mark. Hissing and spitting ontop of the paladin, was a giant spider, the size of a full grown human. Its eight legs were a deathly shade of black while its body gleamed a dark purple.

Screaming, Mark held the creature off with his sword. Almost immedietly as it attacked the paladin, the spider was thrown against the wall of the cavern by Necromi's spikey iron golem. Then, as the one spider was being killed by the golem, the rest of the nest attacked, swarming around our hero, he horde and the annoying paladin.

Luckily, Necromi and his horde made quick work of the swarm of spiders. The magi skeletons formed a tight circle and shot at the giant spiders, while the worrior skeletons went with the hack-and-slash technique.

Several minutes of carnage and spider-killing pasted before few enough were left so that Necromi left his minions to kill them while he checked on Mark.

"Mark!" Necromi approched the paladin who had obviesly fainted, seeing as he was lying on the floor where he was originally pounced apon. "Damnit, paladin! Wake up!"

Necromi knelt next to Mark and slapped him.

"Ow!" Mark sat up and rubbed his quickly reddening cheek. "By the light! What the hell was that for?"

"Well atleast you're awake. Now c'mon its obviese that the creatures are hostile, so lets go exterminate any remaining of them." Necrmi stood and helped the paladin up.

Now that the small swarm of spiders that attacked were dead, the horde, their master, and a paladin walked deeper into the giant spider's lair.

After a few more small swarms of attacking giant spiders, our hero and one paladin rounded a courner and came across-

"Ah! More spiders!" Mark screamed in near-panic.

The horde of spiders all hissed spimotaniously and attacked. Necromi's minions had a fairly easy time killing them, untill they came to a particularly tough one.

This spider hissed and slammed a leg into the mid-section of its attacking skeleton, causing the minion to shatter against a wall. All the other spiders but this one were now dead, and in a sudden rush the specially colored spider was attacked by wave apon wave of magic attacks delt as Necromi converted all his skeleton minions to magi.

Mark stared in wander at the attack, and a loud noise starttled him. Looking to his right, he saw Necromi firing off bone spears.

Finally, it seemed, the spider died. Its body became a glob that in some places was frozen, in some places boiling, but all eventually to become poisoned ooz.

Blinking, Mark stood in amazment at the demonstration of the necromancer's power, his jaw hanging agap.

"So, still thinking of taking me and my horde on for your little quest?" Necromi asked, facing Mark and smirking slightly.

Slowly, the paladin shook his head and closed his mouth.

"Right, well lets get whatever loot is in that chest in there and get back to Ran-ran. I bet by now she's running around nude out of bordom by now." Necromi laughed at the distrraught look on the face of Mark.

As the opened the chest, a shiny and golden one, I might add, the two saw it filled with gold, random goodies, and.... An eyeball.

"Eeewwww." Mark said disgusted, picking up the eyeball with the tip of his sword and handing it to Necromi, "Here, you can have that. Necromancer's like icky things like that anyway, right?"

Necromi rose and eyebrow as he handled the organ, amazed at how fresh it was.

"Hm, this has to of been down here for quite some time. Yet it shows no evidence of decay. Oh, and Mark."

"Yes necromancer?"

"Necromancer's no particularly like _icky_ things, its just that the rest of the world is as squimish as a housemaid." With that said, the two split the loot and headed back to the surface to meet up with Ran-ran.

Ran-ran's mind stoppe for a moment and examined the situation for a second , her innermonolouge didn't _usually _include random things in her boyfriend's voice. Huh, wierd. Ignoring the call, her mind went back to its daydream. Or, well, it tried to slip back into the daydream.

The small part of her mind that was awake, regestered the call from that voice again, then a hand waving back and forth infront of Ran-ran's face.

However, in the real world (or the physical one Ran-ran was currently stuck in), Ran-ran's boyfriend really _was_ calling for her, and it was _his _hand waving infront of her face. His name, you wish to know? Well, lets jsut call him Forsaken for now, or the rest of the story, okay?

"Squeak! Heeeeey! Sqeeeeaaaak!!!" Forsaken called, hanging from the branch just above Ran-ran's by his legs looking directly into Ran-ran's face.

No response from Ran-ran. So, dangling by his legs, Forsaken grabbed Ran-ran by both sholders and shook her.

Blinking, Ran-ran shook her head slightly, and Forsaken stopped shakking her sholders.

"Wtf?" Ran-ran said, slightly confused.

"So are you un-zoned out now?" Forsaken asked, getting Ran-ran's attention.

With wide eyes Ran-ran sat for a moment before screaming and flailing her arms. She fell off the branch and landed on her back.

"What the HELL man?! Have I finally been in this game dimension long enough to where I'm starting to hallucinate about my boyfriend?" Ran-ran asked herslf tilting her head slightly at who she thought was a hallucination.

Forsaken sighed and dropped out of the tree, landing gracefully on his feet, and made his way over to crouch by his girlfriend.

"Squeak, if I was a hallucination, could I do this?" Forsaken asked as he poked Ran-ran's side, causing her to writhe and let out a little squeaky giggle.

"Wow, who knew that my hallucination could tickle me?!" Ran-ran smiled, still thinking she had gone off the deep end, but considering the fact that maybe she wasn't.

"Sqeeaak."

"Yeah hallucination?"

Smiling in a cute but evil way, Forsaken procceded to use both hands and tickle Ran-ran's sides, causing much giggles and squirming from the little girl who thought herself to be insane.

After a few minutes of this Ran-ran giggled as she and Forsaken layed sprawled out on the jungle floor.

"Still think I'm a hallucination?" Forsaken asked.

"Hmm..." Ran-ran was acctually suprised that she had to think about this. But before she could answer, a loud voice interrupted her thoughts.

"Ran-ran!"

Looking up to who called her name, Ran-ran saw Necromi and Mark standing at the entrance to the spider's lair. Necromi, who had asked the question, pointed to Forsaken and asked,

"Who's he?"

Ran-ran thought for a moment before answering,

"Thats my hallucination of my boyfriend."

Raising an eyebrow and putting his hands on his hips, Necromi asked,

"Well if he's a hallucination, then why can me and Mark see him?"

Then reality hit Ran-ran like a ton of chocolate covered strawberry flavored bricks. She looked at Forsaken, then back at Necromi, who was still waiting for an explination. Holding up her index finger in a gesture that Ran-ran ment to signal her navigationaly challenged friend to wait for a moment, she turned back to Forsaken, blinked, and then embraced him in a tight hug where she spoke so fast that nobody really knew what she was saying.

When Ran-ran had calmed down enough to where her and Forsaken could stand up, they stood up, an arm around each other as faced the necromancer and the paladin.

Necromi, who was still emmensly confused by the amount of affection being exanged by his traveling companion and this stranger.

"So," Necromi began as he crossed his arms, being weary of Forsaken, "I take it that you two know each other?"

"Well no shit." Forsaken said, causin Ran-ran to bow her head at the akwardness of the moment.

"Okay, Necromi, this is my boyfriend. Zerg-chan, this is my necromancer character Necromi and some annoying paladin that's been following us since we left town."

Everyone ignored Mark's complaints, and Necromi raised an eyebrow.

"'Zerg'? Is that what his name is?"

"Nah, just call me Forsaken."

"Ah, and I'm guessing that you and Ran-ran are... romanticly involved?"

"Eh, yeah, you could say that."

Ran-ran smiled as her boyfriend and her necromancer talked about random stuff, just happy that they weren't at each other's throats.

As the day fadded into evening, and the group made camp, Necromi found that he liked the company of Forsaken. Much like Ran-ran he didn't freakout at the knowledge of him being a necromancer, like almost all of the villagers that layed on him did.

In the light of the fire, Necromi finally cared to examine the appearance of this new comer. He wore a light, yet dark in color, leather armor, and if Necromi didn't know any better he'd have to say it was made from demon hide, judging by the texture and the way it looked in the light. On his wrist and shins were black metal gaurds that curved into spikes over the elbows and knees.

Forsaken's skin was fairly pale, more so than Ran-ran's, but not as white as Necromi's. He had a full face with glasses that he wore over eyes that had a tendency to subtly change color, right now they were green with amber around the edge of the pupils.

More talk was had, and Forsaken officially joined the party to help kill the prime evils (Ran-ran had much happiness over this), and there was much cuddling had for the couple as Mark yelled at them about how they were 'doing away with their souls to lust'.

Author's Note!: Yay! New characters! Don't you just love that new character smell?!

Forsaken: Heeey! You spelled my name wrong! Its suppose to be 4saken!

Author: I'm the author and I'm spelling it all out, nya! So, yeah, screw you.

Forsaken: Well if you insist takes shirt off

Author: OO Gah! No, bad character! I ment it figurively! Plus, wouldn't Ran-ran get all angry?!

Ran-ran: is holding a video camera C'mon guys! I have three hours of battery power and a bottle of honey, so lets go!

Author: No! I must go make the next chapter!

Ran-ran: Aw, damn.... Oh well! drags Forsaken off to back room with honey and leather goodies

Author: --;; Sigh, horny little basturds.


	10. Now with SoapOperalike Drama!

Still dead alseep, Necromi rolled over at the loud noise, his brain coming out of its dream-state and wandering what was going on. Screaming, yelling, rusteling of bushes. Suddenly Necromi sat up at the sound of Ran-ran's distressed yelling.

Immesietly disspelling all the sleep from his system, Necromi staggered slightly as he stood up, sword drawn, and his skeleton's at ready to attack.

"Ran-ran!" Necromi called, looking around at the surrounding bushes, not seeing anything.

"Oy, Necromi!" Came Ran-ran's voice, which was promptly followed by a giggle.

"Ran-ran?!" Necromi called, slightly confused as he and his horde turned to see Ran-ran and Forsaken, standing, perfectly fine, but lacking cloths in the bushes.

Lowering his sword, Necromi rubbed his eyes while saying,

"_Please_ tell me that your cloths and armor were stolen by the local cannibals."

"Uhm... Well, I would, but the truth is that its kinda hard to cuddle and make out when you're in armor and such. So after cuddling we kinda got borde and he took his shirt off and then I went all 'rawr lets run around naked!' so then Z-chan was all 'yay nakedness!' but not in those exact words. Well, yeah, we've been streaking through those little cannabal's village place several time, freakin' them out and shit. Funny as Hell!" Ran-ran said in a very hyper mannerism before turning and taking off deeper into the jungle, screaming something about toasted sheep.

Necromi sighed and looked at Forsaken.

"So, whats your excuse for being nude?"

Chuckling slightly, Forsaken shruged and said casually,

"Sqeak wouldn't get naked till I got naked."

"Ah." Necromi shook his head as Forsaken turned to go find Ran-ran, but was stopped by Necromi's outburst.

"Damn boy, did you get attacked by an octapus?!"

Forsaken looked back at Necromi then down to what he was pointing at. All down his spine were deep redish purple markings. Chuckling lightly, Forsaken shook his head and said, while smiling widely

"Nah, Sqeak just found a bottle of strawberry syrup she had."

As Necromi stood slightly confused, Forsaken got dressed as Ran-ran came back, barely containing her giggles and running moving as if she had the jitters.

"Oy people!" She greeted as she grabbed her pants and wrestled them on.

"You know, we should really go back to the city to see what Cain can make of this eye." Necromi said as he sat down and took out the disembodied eyeball from his pack.

As Ran-ran's head poked through the collar of her shirt, she took one look at the eyeball and said,

"Thats Kahlem's eye. You're suppose to go all rawr and get the rest of his relicks and then go get a mace and smash something and then go kill Mephisto. But you should really be hearing this from Cain, not me."

Shruging, Necromi took out a scroll bound in blue ribbon and opened a blue portal. Then he looked at the two teenagers as they got back into their armor, then at Mark, who was still sleeping.

"Do you think we should wake the pally up?" Ran-ran asked looking at the paladin then at her friends.

Necromi and Forsaken extanged glances before shaking their heads and mixing answers,

"Nah... He doesn't need to be awake... Not like we really need him..."

Necromi stood up and said,

"Well should be back before he wakes up. But just incase I'll leave a couple of skeletons, and if they fail to protect him, then well, its not like we really _need_ him, right?"

Chuckling, Forsaken agreed, and before to much longer the three and most of Necromi's horde were going through the portal to go get an eyeball examined and.. uh... other stuff.

"Ah! Kah'lem's eye!" Cain smiled as he took up the eyeball Necromi held out of the old scribe to examine.

"Well, while Necromi's getting the Kah'lem's Will quest, I'm going to go get new armor!" Ran-ran stated, still hyped up on streaking, "Wanna come along?"

Forsaken shruged before saying,

"Do they have a smoke shop around here? I haven't had a cigarette in weeks."

Ran-ran shruged as they walked, but thought about it before saying,

"You could try Alkor, the local potion dude. If he doesn't get you something alike to tabaco then he'll proboblly get you something to get you fucked up."

So the two seperated ways, one driven by the need to get something new and shiney, the other by the lack of a certin tabaco product.

After about an hour at the local smith's Ran-ran had gotten a new set of armor, a new, more powerful crossbow. So now, borde, decked out in her new shineyness, and in need of something to do, Ran-ran sprinted clear across the dock city to Alkor's little hut, where just outside of it Necromi was stalking up on potion and sitting at the edge of the docks, smoking something alike to cigaretts, was Forsaken.

"Oy!" Ran-ran said as she skided to a stop, "Guys! I got new armor! Its all shiney and it had a bell right here see?!"

The armor Ran-ran bought included a brestplade, that on the front of the collar had a huge- probobly 3 inch in diameter- silver bell, that jinggled at every little movement its wearer made, chainmail-leather boots that form-fitted her calfs, light-weight plate leggings for her thighs, bolted hard leather lower arm gaurds that also had large bells- not as large as the ones on the breastplate, mind you-, and a circet that gleamed an icy blue.

"Sqeak, is the big ass bell _really_ nessisary?" Forsaken commented, sounding extremely calm.

"Yes it was! I see that you got something to smoke?"

"Mmmmmm Hmmmmmm. I'm buzzed."

"Nifty." Ran-ran smiled and turned to Necromi who was finishing up talking to Alkor.

"Well, it seems that we need to collect the brain and heart of this uncorruptable priest, Kah'lem."

"Told ya so."

"Indeed. No come on you two, we need to go wake Mark up and get the brain from somewhere in the Flayer's Jungle."

"While we're there we might want to pick up the Gidbin."

"The what?"

"Eh, nevermind." Ran-ran shruged and she and Forsaken stood, turning back to the direction of the portal and began to walk.

On their way to the portal, Necromi was deep in thought, and while they walked, he let the two teenages lead the way to the portal while he followed. But as they were walking, two men that looked very much alike to himself in the asspect of hair and skin color, walked into the city talking together untill one looked our heros' direction.

"Necromi! Is that you?!" Pulled our necromancer friend out of his deep thoughs at the familiar voices calling his name.

Turning to the sorce of the call, Necromi spotted the two men as they walked twards him, both smiling. In an instant Necromi was smiling too and said,

"Tama! Ki'rah! What are you two doing here?"

Ran-ran and Forsaken turned to see what was going on and watched as Necromi embraced these new characters.

"Oh, you know, Rathma got kinda boring, so we decided to go walking!" One of the men said, as he and the other man pulled away from Necromi.

"Yes, so what have you been up too? Aren't you suppose to be killing the evil in the west?" The other man said, grinning and shaking a finger jokingly at Necromi.

"I heard that the demons Andariel and Deriel were killed by a necromancer and an insane little not to long ago."

"Yeah, so where's you insane little friend?" The man said, in good sarcasim.

Necromi rose and eyebrow and stated,

"You mean Ran-ran? She's right over-"

"What about me? I heard my name!!" Ran-ran said enthusiasticly as she poked her head between Necromi's arm and abdomen.

"Ah, well, here she is. Tama, Ki'rah, meet my traveling companion. Ran-ran, meet a couple of my childhood friends."

"Oy!" Ran-ran waved hyperly and stood up straight.

"And some where is Ran-ran's bitch, Forsak- OW!!!" Necromi cried as Forsaken smacked the back of the necromancer's head with the blunt side of a broad sword, where he pulled it out of, is anyones guess, for now, I have a story to get on with.

"Heey! I am a not a bitch!" Forsaken said in his own defense, lowering his sword and leaning against it, with the blade to the ground.

"Wow, I had a feeling that you were the one that deffeted those lesser evils." Tama, the guy who kept making minor jokes.

"By the by, Necromi, your father wants to see you. He said for us to drag you back home if we saw you by chance." Ki'rah, the other man, stated.

Necromi rose an eyebrow,

"Really?"

"Yes, he walked off murmuring something about a dagger or something, I wasn't really paying attention." Tama said, scratching his head.

"You never really did pay attention, Tama." Ki'rah sighed sarcasticly, as they all got a small laugh out of it.

"Well, I have been meaning to go visi-"

_SMACK!_

Ran-ran sighed as Necromi slumped and looked to her boyfriend.

"Now was knocking him out_ really_ nessisary?"

Forsaken shruged as he grinned and said, in his own deffense,

"He said that he was suppose to be dragged home!"

"Smart ass."

"I know I am."

Tama and Ki'rah grabbed Necromi and Ki'rah said,

"You two are welcome to follow, Necromi's father said that he wanted to meet the other person who deffeted those two lesser evils."

"Wait, where are we going again?"

"To Rathma, the ancient necromancer city. You should feel luck you're getting an invintaiton, rarely does any one outside of the city get to visit." Tama said, shifting Necromi's weight.

"Yes, I believe the last time an outsider was there was many many years ago." Ki'rah lead them to a portal near the one our heros came through.

Both Forsaken and Ran-ran agreed to come. All of them entered the portal, and as soon as they were all through, the portal winked closed on the dock side.

Suddenly sitting up, Necromi's eyes flew open and he screamed,

"_What the Hell?!?!_"

But just as soon as those words left his mouth was he met with a harsh,

"Necromi, shut up!" A very familiar voice said.

Very soon, about as soon as the dizyness wore off, Necromi acctually looked around at his surroundings and found them to be very familiar. Fortunately, Necromi relized why the surroundings were so familiar- for he was in the living room he himself grew up in! Suddenly relizing this, Necromi looked over to the direction of the earlier voice, only to see none other than-

"Father?!" Necromi exclaimed, nearly falling off the couch he was sitting on.

Necromi's father, like every other necromancer, had extremely pale skin and hair. His features were hard, and like everyone else, minus Necromi, in the family tree, peircing, pale grey eyes, which he was looking at his son with right now.

"Well, seems like Forsaken gave you a good thwamp on the head." Necromi's father said, smirking slightly while behind him Ran-ran and Forsaken stood.

Sighing, Necromi swung his leg over onto the floor.

"So, father, you wanted to see me about something?"

Necromi's father nodded and then spoke,

"Necromi, you know that I'm very proud of you for deffeting the two lesser evils, Deriel and Andariel, right?"

As the words of praise left the old man's lips, Necromi paled (if that was even possible). His father _never_ praised him for anything, with the exception of when he was about to deliver very, very bad news- about this time Necromi was reminded of all those times his father informed him of how his pet was dead, obvessly the man thought that if you praised a child muchly, they wouldn't cry when you delivered bad news. And now Necromi's father was using that very same tactic to tell his son something.

After a moment of shifting and akward silence, Necromi's father decided to speak again.

"I, uh, heard it was a very valiant battle... or something like that...."

"Oh just out with it old man, what's you're bad news?" Necromi exclaimed, not able to deal with the stress of waiting any longer.

"Right. You remember how every time you wanted to know about the day you were born, and how I would distracte you with something small and cute like a cave bunny?"

"You mean the ones that would die a week later?"

"Yes, exactly. Well, this isn't easy for me to say. But, Necromi, you weren't... You aren't..."

At this point Ran-ran burst out,

"Just tell him already, damnit!!"

"Necromi, You aren't really my son!" An akward silence fell over the room again.

"W-what?" Necromi said, quietly, confused out of his mind.

Slowly, Necromi's father continued.

"You see, Necromi, you were not born within the city of Rathma. In fact, you aren't known to be of any native necromancer family blood."

Necromi leaned back into the couch, absorbing the information, not showing any emotions on his face. But his eyes reflected the deep hurt, confusion, and distraute state of his mind.

"You are really the son of an amazon clan. Your mother and I fought together in a civil war just after your birth. She saved my life, and I was in debt to her indeffinently. Her only request was that I take care of you and raise you as my own if anything was to happen to her. She died, and so I followed though on my promise to her."

The room fell into a tense silence again. Necromi blinked and stood up.

"And you didn't feel to need to tell me this untill now, _why?_" Necromi said, venemously.

"Well, I wasn't intending on telling you untill I was on my death bed. But seeing as the evils are loose apon the world, I felt the need to tell you incase something happened to either of us before I could tell you." Necromi's father spoke slowly, solemnly.

"But that means... That mean..... _I'm not a true necromancer_!" Necromi spoke, as if to himself.

"Don't say that. You're a damn good necroma-"

Necromi wasn't listening as his father tried to confort him, he just kept talking to himself.

"_All those skeleton's I rose. They mean nothing? I summoned the teeth and claws of Trag'Oul, do those mean nothing as well? If I am not a necromancer,then what does that make me? Nothing as well?"_ Necromi looked at his hands, not paying attention to anything, he turned his body and walked deeper into the house, into a back room, the one he called his own as a child, as he contiued to talk to himself.

"Well_ that_ can't be good." Forsaken was the first to break the veil of silence that hung over the room.

"Indeed." Ran-ran said, worried greatly for her necromancer, "What if he goes psycho and kills himslef?"

Necromi's father sighed, stood and shook his head. Then, he turned to the two teenagers and gestured to Forsaken,

"Forsaken, go confort Necromi. Ran-ran, you come with me."

As the old man walked in a diffrent direction than Necromi had, Ran-ran shruged and said,

"Good luck with Necromi."

"Heh, yeah, right." Forsaken sighed and walked off to go confort the distraught necromancer.

When Forsaken walked into Necromi's room, the door was open and the necromancer was sitting on his bed, his back against the head board as he stared forward, his eyes unblinked.

After a moment of silence, Forsaken spoke,

"Oy, Necromi."

No response.

"Hey. Necromi. C'mon, we don't have time for you to be all traumatized, we have to go kill Mephisto and shit like that!"

Necromi blinked and looked at the teenager.

_"I don't think I can._" Necromi said gravely, no emotion leaking into his voice.

"Course you can! Just summon your skeletons, swing your sword, do other necromancer stuff and thats it!"

"No, Forsaken, I don't think you inderstand, I don't think that I can go on. Just knowing that I'm not even remotely blood related to any of the families in Rathma makes me not want to continue the fight."

"Dude," Forsaken spoke seriously, "Just because you aren't a blood related member of any of the families here, doesn't mean you aren't a necromancer."

"How would you know?"

"Well I would think that being a necromancer has to do with something a little more then just blood lines! It would be stupid if it had nothing to do with actual skill!"

"Forsaken, when my father said that I wasn't blood related to any of the families in Rathma, I lost all faith in my skills."

"Then get you faith back! We have evil to kill! Plus, you're the best damn necromancer I know, doesn't that count for anything?"

Necromi shook his head.

"I believe that I'm the _only_ necromancer you know."

"HA!! You just said that you're a necromancer!"

Ran-ran followed Necromi's father to an ajoining room to the one she was previously in. It was essitally a small library, its walls lined with a multitude of books. It had a desk, chairs, and plenty of light. Near the back a fireplace burned, warming the room and making it quite cozy.

As Ran-ran briefly wandered why she was brought in there, Necromi's father walked to the mantel, and shited somethings, his back blocking her view.

When the old man finally turned around, he was holding in both his hands a jade-green dagger.

"I must go to a councle meeting now, and since it may take some time to get Necromi to relize whats really important, I would like you to give this to him." Necromi's father said, holding the dagger out for Ran-ran to take.

Ran-ran carefully took the dagger and examined it.

"Well, what do you mean by 'what's really important'?" Asked Ran-ran as she lowered the blade slightly.

The old man smiled slightly,

"He seems to think that being a necromancer is about being apart of a long blood line."

"So its not?"

"No, it isn't. But I'm afraid that if he doesn't relize this soon, the Great Cycle of Being may be in jepordy. Do what you can to help him." With no more works, the old man walked past Ran-ran and out of the room.

Pausing momentarily to look at the dagger, Ran-ran thought of what she could say to her traumatized friend that would make him better. She thought about this as she walked out of the room and down the hallway, to where she was guessing Necromi's room was.

As Ran-ran looked down, she could have sworn she thought she saw smoke coming from the crack between the floor and door. No, wait, there _was_ smoke coming from undernieth the door!!

In a moment of panic, Ran-ran forgot all her 'fire safety' rules, grabbed the knob and swung the door open screaming,

"Guys!! Fiiiii- what the hell!" Ran-ran stopped.

The room was filled with smoke, not thick enough to hide Necromi and Forsaken, who were sprawled out on the floor, passing between them what appered to be a joint.

"Z-chan! Is that weed?!"

Forsaken looked up from the floor and stated, in an overly calm manner,

"No, my dear, it is not. Alkor sold it to me. But it does work to get one fucked up. Want some?"

Ran-ran shruged, took the joint, took a long hit, and handed it back to Forsaken.

"Well what about Necromi, is he still all traumatized?" She asked as she breathed out the smoke in her lungs.

"Nope." Forsaken grinned as they both looked at the necromancer.

"You know what Forsaken? You were right. I am a _damn_ good necromancer. I can have a shit load of skeletons under my command, I summoned the claws of Trag'Oul, I made a golem out of iron, I can identify maaaaany poisons, not to mention I can scare the shit out of anything I run into if I really want to. I rock." Necromi stated, smiling contently.

"Dude, Necromi, do you have anything to eat here?" Ran-ran asked, relized how hungrey she was.

"Sure, father always keeps a supply of mead and odd little snack things in this one place by this one room in the house."

So after a few hours of being high, the three went back to the little camp just outside of Kurast. Mark yelled at them about leaving him with the skeletons, and the party left for the Flayer's Dungeon to find another peice of Kah'lem.

Author's Note: Woot, chapters are getting longer! ... Thats a good thing, right? Anyway, good news! I have an idea for another D2 fic! I'll proboly end up posting it. Though it may take anywhere from 2 days to several months to get the first chapterness up. Oh well. Gimme reviews! Or flames! Everything is welcomed! /


	11. Lesson 3, When Not Dropped, Dissect!

As the corrupted and monsterous councle members stummbled around just outside of the Durence of Hate, another of the horridle mutaited members fell, its body filled with a great deal of bolts.

The reason it fell, even though no one was in their immediete visenity? Well, if you were to stand where the corrupted councle members were, take out a pair of bonaculares, and look about 20 yards to the north, you'd see that two people were up in a tree, holding crossbows.

Ran-ran and Forsaken reloaded and took aim at the councle members.

"I still think it'd be more fun to go down there and cut 'em up." Forsaken commented as he shifted his glasses and shot at the demons.

"Yeah, but this is more romanticyfullish!" Ran-ran smiled as she rested her head Forsaken's sholder and shot.

"True be that. True be that."

For the past several minutes the two had been sniping out the councle memebers while Necromi and Mark got the last peice of Kah'lem, his heart.

An unidentifyable techno song blared from the headphones set around Forsaken's neck, and the two enjoyed the fun of what was essintially a shooting game while the music scared the majority of the surrounding local wildlife. Ah, the simple pleasure of being with one's significant other while saving the world.

Dodging another bolt of lightning, Necromi shot a bone spear at the offending bat-like creature that he and Mark were facing off in the sewers.

While Necromi raised more skeleton's from fallen bat demon creatures, Mark worked on getting the chest open.

"It won't budge!" The paladin called, kicking the chest.

"Then use your sword and hit it till it does!" Necromi said, cutting the bat creature with hs sword as it got within range.

As a short screech permitted from the creature, the sound of cracking wood and iron brought Necromi's attention back to Mark as he put his sword away, the top half of the objective chest obliterated.

"Got it open!" Mark cried happily as he reached in and pulled out a human heart. "Eew. Once again, your's."

With a disgusted look on his face, Mark threw the heart to Necromi, who caught it and examined it.

"Yep, this is his heart alright." Necromi said with a smile, putting the disembodied heart in his pack.

"Yes, now can we _please_ get out of here?" Mark said as he jumped as a rat that had surried by his feet dissaperred into the shadows

With a sickening sound, Forsaken's scyth cut threw the final councle member's body like a sergeon's scalple through his patients flesh. The monster of a corrupted human fell, body splitting apart, and its guts spilted all over the floor.

"Yay!" Ran-ran said as she ran over and huged Forsaken. "Now that they're dead, we can go all rawr and destroy the compelling orb! Then go all rawr in the Durence of Hate and kill Mephisto!"

"Okay, then lets destroy the orb." Forsaken said, looking over to the red orb which stood on a pedastle nearby.

"Uh, I think its suppose to be all smasheded after we combine the flail and the body parts and get Kah'lem's will." Ran-ran said, looking around on the floor for the flail.

"Nah!" Forsaken grinned as he raised his scyth, then in on hard movement, smacked the orb as if it was a baseball.

The orb flew, smacked into the wall, then fell to the floor, unharmed.

"Well," Forsaken said, walking over and picking the orb up, "It hasn't shattered yet!"

Then, raising the orb high over his head, he smashed the orb into the ground. Still, The compelling orb simply bounced, and refused to break.

While her boyfriend was busy trying to destroy the orb, Ran-ran was digging through the bloody corpse of the councle members, trying to find Kah'lem's flail.

"Damnit, where is it?!" She yelled angrily, throwing down what seemed like intestines. Standing up, she walked over to the last corpse.

Much to Ran-ran's suprise, and happiness, a long shaft protruded from the belly of the monster. As Ran-ran took out a dagger, she struck the cadaver, pulling the blade, cutting into the flesh.

How she dug about the insides of the fallen councle members is just a bit to disgusting to discribe, so I'll just continue where Ran-ran's bloody, and has the flail, yay! /

"Yay! Flailness!" Ran-ran said triumphently, watching as Forsaken kicked the orb past her, into the wall.

"Ran-ran!"

Ran-ran turned to face Necromi and Mark, the necromancer looking horrified at Forsaken bombarding the compelling orb.

"Ran-ran, make your bitch stop kic- _OWW_!!!" Necromi was cut off as the compelling or b connected with his face.

"For the last time, I'm not a bitch!!" Forsaken screamed, walking over and picking up the compelling orb. "So did you guys get the heart?"

"Yes! We did!" Necromi said, slightly aggitated. But dispite his growing headache and minor nose bleed, managed to get out the horadric cube, the heart, eye, and brain of Kah'lem, and took the flail Ran-ran found. Putting all of these in the horadric cube, he used the power of the cube, and pulled out the new transmuted item, Kah'lem's will.

The orb now placed back upon the pedistal, Necromi raised the uber flail, and in one swing, hit the orb, shattering it into a thousand peices. As soon as the orb was obliterated, the stairs to the Durence of Hate opened.

"Yay, lets go kill Mephisto!" Ran-ran said hyperly, hooking arms with Forsaken and Necromi, and skiped into the Durence.

"Hey! Wait for me!" Mark called, caught up in the horde of undead.

Author's Note: Yay, chapter done!! Oo! And before I forget, I sent thanks to all of my reviewers! Plus specialfull thanks to Katz-go-moo, who deffended my fic against a mean reviewer who wanted Ran-ran to die in a painful zombie mauling.

Ran-ran: But I don't want to die in a vicious zombie mauling!

Author: Which is why you aren't, nya. ;;

Ran-ran: Really? Yay, nya!!

Author: Next chapter should be up soon! Key word, _should_ ;;/


	12. Giant Sperm of Doom!

The Durence of Hate radiated negative and hateful energy, so much that it only worked to amplify the agitation between Mark from Necromi and Forsaken to full loathing.

"Will you guys just stop it?! Its getting fucking annoying!!" Ran-ran yelled, pushing her friends off the paladin. Obviessly the only effect Ran-ran suffered from the Durence was that she was very easy to aggitate, and I'll make and understatement of _very._

They had made it to the third level without the paladin dying, could they atleast wait untill Mephisto was dead. By the time they got there how ever, Ran-ran and Forsaken were the only two who were willing to talk to each other.

"Blargh, I know that that bastard is suppose to be around here somewhere." Ran-ran said as they rounded a courner, and what do ya know? No Mephisto, still.

"Ya know, maybe we should follow the sound of that insaneish laughter." Forsaken pointed out as a demonic cackle was heard.

"Yeah, c'mon, lets go!" Ran-ran said, grabbing Forsaken and running off to meet the demon in battle.

"Hold on a sec!" Forsaken and Ran-ran stopped, and he turned back to watch for a momnet as Necromi and Mark argued, "HEEY!!!"

The sudden loud noise made both the necromancer and paladin jump and shut up.

"C'mon! We have a demon to kill, god-damnit!" Forsaken yelled, and they all continued on to find the Lord of Hatred.

As the group went in the particulare direction, the evil laughter grew louder, and lounder, untill it stopped. They looked around a courner, and there, standing (or in his case, floating) was Mephisto.

With the demon's back turned too our heros, Mephisto spoke,

"So I see that you finally found me, after 3 and a half hours of searching!!" Mephisto spoke then turned to look at the group, grinning evily, his eyes filled with malice.

"You made it past the two lesser evils, Andariel and Duriel, impressive. But I-"

"_What _are you _talking_ about?!" Necromi interuppted, "Only me and Ran-ran killed Andariel and Duriel! The only reason pally is here is because he doesn't have the balls to kill anything remotely demonic! And Forsaken is just here because Ran-ran is!"

Mark busted in at this moment and yelled at Necromi,

"Necromancers are far more evil than any demon! You befoul the air you exhale and give a bad name to the human race!"

"Thats only because people like _you_ are fucking pansies with weak-ass stomaches! Its not our fault that you think working with the dead and poisons is wrong!"

Ran-ran bowed her head and sighed. This was going to give her a headache.

Mark and Necromi kept on yelling before Forsaken stepped in,

"Hey, Shudup!!! We have a demon to kill!"

Mark turned to Forsaken and pointed an accusing finger,

"Don't try to redeme yourself! You and your _slut_ are a textbook case of corrupted youth!!"

And that was the last straw, both Necromi and Forsaken attacked Mark. Forsaken drawing out a mysteriously large pile of throwing daggers, and Necromi sending bone spears and terrifying bone spirits after the paladin.

"Ah, what a beautiful display of their hatred for each other." Mephisto said blissfully, clasping his hands together.

"So," Mephisto started, turning to look at Ran-ran, who was sighing and shaking her head, "Why aren't you in there trying to kill the paladin?"

Ran-ran rose her head and thought about it for a second before turning to the demon,

"I guess seeing Mark getting killed is enough to satisfy my passive aggressiveness."

Shrugging, Ran-ran watched for a second more as the bone spirits and throwing daggers left Mark an impalled pile of bloody flesh and metal.

Mephisto clapped at what he considerd a 'masterpiece of what hate drives one to do'.

"You know what?" Ran-ran said, turning to Mephisto.

"Yes?" The Lord of Hatred rose an eye brow, waiting for the girl's comment.

"I never really rellized this before, but you look like a giant, demented sperm."

"Pardon?"

"Eh, nevermind, just go dead." Ran-ran smiled as she rose her crossbow and shot at the demon, her first shot acompanied by the shots of all the skeleton magi, Forsaken's throwing daggers, and Necromi's bone spears and several bone spirits.

Ran-ran darted out of the way to avoid a lightning bolt. She sucked behind a pillar and reload before firing it at Mephsito.

Necromi's skeleton worriors attacked Mephsito viciously as their master fired bone spears and spirits along side Forsaken, who threw dagger, after dagger, after dagger, after dagger. Untill of course he _finally_ ran out of daggers and he began to use ninja stars.

Mephsito's pained screams echoed off the walls of the Durence as his life slowly dwindled away as he was bombarded again and again.

In a last ditch effort for survival, Mephisto sent out a nova, destroying the already low-health skeleton worriors attacking him and throwing their bones.

This only did to anger the already aggitated Necromi, and in a move that cost the remainder of his mana, summoned dozens upon dozens of vengful spirits all at once, all of them targeted at Mephisto.

In a huge, overpowering wave the spirits hit Mephisto, draining away the rest of his health and drawing out an inhuman scream from him.

Once the spirits had cleared out, Mephsito's body lay on the floor, hundreds of throwing weapons sticking out of him.

"Whoa. Dude, that was kick ass!" Forsaken said, grinning and lowering his ninja stars.

Necromi panted and leaned against a nearby pillar for support, worn out. Putting his back to the pillar and slidding down to sit, he brought out a blue potion. He uncorkded the mana potion and drank it all down hungrily. Necromi threw the empty bottle off in a random direction and turned to the corpse of Mephisto.

"So I take it Mephisto is dead?" Necromi asked tiredly watching as Ran-ran poked the now dead Lord of Hatred with a bolt.

Once our heros got around to summoning a town portal, and got back to the dock side, Cain was waiting for them.

"Well?" The old scribe asked, anxiously.

"Well, Mephisto and Mark are dead." Necromi answered, still periodicly drinking mana potions.

"Mark? Who the Hell is Mark?" Cain questioned, confused.

"Dude," Ran-ran turned to Necromi, "I don't think we ever told Cain who Mark was."

"And who the Hell are you?!" Cain pointed to Forsaken.

Forsaken scratched his head for a moment before saying,

"Dude, Necromi, you need to keep the old guy informed."

Sighing, Necromi began his explination.

"Okay. Mark was an annoying paladin that wanted to kill me because something about necromancers being foul or something. So yes, he followed us around for no real reason at all. Now Forsaken is Ran-ran's lover-bitch-type thing."

Forsaken yelled and kicked as he was restrained by the iron golem as Necromi smiled and explained everything that had happened in the Durence.

"Well did you get his soulstone?" Cain asked, glancing at the portal.

"Yep! And we're ready to go to the hell forge and get it all smashededed!" Ran-ran said hyperly, holding up Mephisto's blue soulstone.

"Good! Now, there should be the Infernal Gate to Hell back down there. Go through it, and I'll meet you there." Said Cain, turning away from them and walking off.

"Well, I guess that means that we have to go back down there." Necromi looked at Ran-ran, then at Forsaken, then at the portal they had just went through.

"BITCH!! Let me go!!!" Forsaken yelled as the iron golem, and the rest of the horde followed their master through the portal back down to the Durence of Hate.

Author's Note: Well, that took a while to force outta myself, but atleast I got it done. Yay, I feel like a really really fat person that just got to the top of the stairs!! No offense to the morbidly obese out there, just that... uhm... Yeah... Now gimme reviews!!


	13. This Chapter Goes to the Pets!

Author's Note: Well, I just got back from X-mas Trip to visit family in Florida, and I haven't been able to work on this fic inparticuar. But I did make a short fic as a late X-mas present to my readers! 'Corse its the produce of 18 hours on a bus, large quantaties of caffine, and being around my insane family. I should be up soon, as in _check back in a couple hours_ soon! (unless the cold meds make me to sleepy) Oh, and Forsaken-chan, still not caring if I spelled teh name wrong, screw you, figertively and literally (.). Now read! And gimme some reviews!!! /

Back into the lowest reaches of the Durence of Hate our heros had to decend. The corpse of Mephisto lay rotting as they approched the gate to Hell.

Forsaken had finally gotten out of the grip of the iron golem, and had then proceded to smack Necromi with the broad side of his sword.

"Shouldn't we atleast have a while to rest and stuff? I mean, we just got done killing Mephisto!" Ran-ran asked, as they all stood before the gate to Hell.

"I guess Cain just wants us to get to killing Diablo as fast as we can..." Forsaken said, trailing off as he turned to look behind him.

"You guys hear that?" He asked, looking at Mephisto's body.

"Hear what?" Necromi inquired, both him and Ran-ran turning to look at the cadaver also.

"It was kinda like a slithery sound."

Curious, Forsaken took a few steps twards the body before a movement made him stop and tilt his head before he exclaimed,

"Speedy!!"

Running to the corpse, Forsaken picked up a long, green boa that was slithering out of Mephisto's abdomen.

"I was wandering where you were! C'mon, we have to go to Hell." Forsaken grinned as he wrapped the snake about his sholders and went back to the portal.

"Speedy-chan!" Ran-ran giggled and patted the snake on the head, "I was begining to wander in Z-chan had just left you back in the real world!"

"So," Necromi began, gaining the attention of the two teenagers again, " Some one please remind me why Forsaken has a snake."

"Just because dude, now come on!" Forsaken said as he ran through the portal, immedietly followed by Ran-ran grabbing Necromi and going through.

"Ooooo." Ran-ran said as she and her two friends appered in Plains of Despair, it was just like in the game, only... cooler! The landscape seemed to go on forever, the sky was a swirling blood red, and the tortured screamed of the damned seemed to radiate from the very air!

Necromi himself was left speechless, this was he had ever been to Hell. He looked over to Ran-ran, who was chasing some bird-like hell beast as if they were seagulls on a beach. Forsaken was busy talking to his snake, sitting on the ground and whispering sweet encouragments like most good, loving pet owners often do for no apparent reason.

"Have you two lost your minds?!" Necromi exclaimed, startling the two. Ran-ran stopped her bird chasing and Forsaken stopped talking to Speedy.

"We're in Hell, and you're talking to your snake, and you're chasing the Hell crows like its a walk in the park!"

"We're in Hell? Oh, cool." Forsaken stated, sarcasticly as he stood up.

"Oh well, c'mon! Lets go check in at the Pandemonium Fortress!!!" Ran-ran happily said as she glanced about.

"Excuse me? What are you talking about now?" Necromi, now confused, asked.

Ran-ran made a dramatic, double handed gesture to the top of a nearby hill, where at the top of it, sat the glowing, seemingly pearly gates of Heaven.

"Oh. Why didn't I notice that?" muttered Necromi to himself, he and his horde following Forsaken and Ran-ran to the heavenly forstress.

Once inside the gate to the forstress, the insesent cries of the dead seemed to calm into a gentle singing.

"About time you three got here!" Came Cain's voice as the three continued to the back of the fortress.

As the three reached the back of the Fortress, Cain was indeed situated on a stood, where nearby stood Tyreal.

"How the Hell is Cain already here when the portal to the Durence and thus the gate to Hell closed, this doesn't make and fooking sense!!!"

At this Cain only chuckled.

"Now now Ran-ran, this isn't the right time or place to worry about such things."

"On the contrary old dude, now is the perfect time!!!" Ran-ran raised her index finger in a dramatic gesture.

"Oh calm down Ran-ran, we have other things to worry about. Such as what we're to do with Mephisto's soulstone." Necromi said as he took the unholy blue stone holding Mephisto's spirit from his pocket.

"You are to take it to the Hellforge and smash it." Tyreal started, "But before you destroy the soulstone, I have a request. On the Plains of Despair there is a-"

"I remember this quest! Go kill Izual, he's suffered enough. Gotcha'!" Ran-ran interrupted. "Now where the Hell is Z-chan?!"

"Right here!" Forsaken said as he jumped out of the shadows by Ran-ran. "So c'mon, lets go!"

After getting out of the Pandemonium Fortress, our heros searched the Plains of Despair... for three minutes, before Forsaken said,

"Hey, do you think Tyreal would be pissed if I took his sword?" completely at random.

"I dunno, I guess." Ran-ran answered, holding her crossbow at ready." Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no real reason." Forsaken smiled as a noted sarcasim entered his voice. Then he reached into his pack, and pulled out a long sword, the metal it was made from seemed to glow white.

Ran-ran looked at the sword, blinked afew times as her mouth before she yelled,

"_You took Tyreal's sword_?!"

Necromi bowed his head as Forsaken laughed and said,

"Yeah, remember when he was talking and before you yelled for me? I kinda stole his sword while he wasn't looking."

"You're insane Forsaken." Necromi said as shook his head slowly.

"As Sqeak often says, I may be insane, but its more entertaining than being normal!"

"Damn staight! Now come on! Lets go kill Izual!" Ran-ran turned dramaticly to what looked like a horde of demons coming their way.

Within moments the battle had started, a small group of Venom Lords (probobly six or seven) attacked, shooting flamed. The skeleton worriers and iron golem were simply scorched by the flames, and behind them the skeleton magi, bone spears, throwing daggers, and bolts only reinburst the power of the attack. Soon all the Venom Lords fell, and standing not to far away was what looked like a venom lord, only white with odd red and blue markings.

"So, the mortals have made it to Hell, eh?" The demon Izual said, followed by a deep, evil, cackle.

The laughter was cut off by the attack of the wave of magic attacks made by the skeleton magi, and soon by the blades of the skeleton warriors who literally pounced on the demon, hacking and slashing and cutting.

In a painfull cry, Izual threw off all the skeletons, shattering some, who were quickly replaced thanks to the fallen Venom Lords, and making others revert to being magi.

Before the skeletons could block the way, Forsaken took the holy blade stolen from Tyreal, and threw it in place of his usual throwing dagger. The sword spun, and half way on the trip to Izual, suddenly lit up in a light blue flame, and suddenly embedded itself in the demon's midsection. Izual screamed in and inhuman scream of pain, and the flesh around the sword seemed to burn, turning black and crispy. The demon fell, writhing on the groud, the blue flame around the sword seemed to feed off of his pain, growing brighter and bigger. Finally the demon stilled, dead.

Our heros approched the body, and Forsaken took back the sword with a jerk. After a moment of just standing around and doing nothing, Necromi said,

"Okay, well, now that Izual is dead, we should probobly go destroy Mephisto's soulstone."

"Yep." Forsaken nodded in agreement.

"And we should then go on to kill Diablo."

"Yep."

"Then rejoice as the world would be saved."

"Yep."

"But first you should probobly give Tyreal his sword back."

"Fuck off."

"_Tyreal was a fool to have trusted me!!!"_

Ran-ran rolled her eyes as the two aregued in a, thankfully, nonviolent manner and ignord Izual's ethral spirtit. Sure, they weren't trying to kill each other, but it still got annoying. But was even more annoying was the fact that Izual's spirtit was now trying to rant to her.

"_Hey! Are you paying attention?!"_

"Nope." Ran-ran said simply and turned her back on the fallen angel, trying to think of something intresting to do.

A loud crunching sound made Ran-ran look back to the corpse of Izual's demon body, as a rat chewed on a peice of burnt skin.

"Huh, didn't know there were rats in Hell..." Ran-ran said to herself as she found the small rodent to be somewhat familiar. Acctually, it was very familiar. White body with a black head and sholders, black diamond streched over its back, spotted tail... Wait a minute... Ran-ran knew this rat!

"Doko!" Ran-ran suddenly cried, and the rats ears pirked up, and the rodent ran to the edge of Izual's body closest to Ran-ran, "Don't chew on that! It might have germies!"

As Ran-ran picked Doko up, the rat ran up her sholder, under braid onto her other sholder.

"Hey! Guys!" Ran-ran said, Forsaken and Necromi turning to look at her.

"Doko!" Forsaken said, his face lighting up at the sight of the rat.

"Um.. Ran-ran?" Necromi began as the two teenagers petted Doko, You _do_ know that you have a rat on your sholder.... right?"

"Well duh! This is my rat, Doko!"

Sighing, Necromi stated,

"You two are insane, I swear."

"So are we going to go destroy the soulstone or not?" Forsaken asked.

"Yes! Now lets go!" Necromi pulled out a map and began to lead, after Forsaken and Ran-ran made sure it was the right way, the way to the Hellforge.

Author's Note: YOSH!!! Not even the cold medicen could stop me from finishing this chapter, BE HAPPY!!!! And then gimme reviews Oo, and the new short fic should be called 'Diffrent Point of View'


	14. Meet Izual, Fallen Angel of Annoyingness

Author's Note: singing Oooh, I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay, cuz I sleep all night and I WORK ALL DAY!!!! Hehehe, ponytails are fun . Read fanfic!!!! My hair needs grooming, where's my brush?!

"I can't believe that we acctually trusted _you_ with a map!!" Ran-ran exclaimed to Necromi's back as our heros wandered aimlessly in some far, far off part of the Plains of Despair.

Since Ran-ran and Forsaken had trusted the necromancer not to get lost (seeing as the map wasn't up-side-down or any of that madness), they didn't bother to pay attention to where they were going. They were originally bound for the River of Flame, but instead were 20 miles off-course. It wasn't that they were going in circles either, it was just that Necromi was very, very, _very_ bad at navigating, and that's putting it nicely.

"You know, maybe we should just kinda portal back to the Fortress." Forsaken suggested, letting Doko run down his chest.

"No, we really don't need to!" Necromi stated, slightly distracted as he looked around at the surrounding broken buildings.

"Dude, I think he's right, we really should just go back to the PF and find our way to the River of Flame from there!" Ran-ran tried to convince her necromancer friend.

"Fine! We'll portal back!" Necromi said tiredly, feeling in his pocket for a scroll. Finding none there, he searched his other pockets.

"Something wrong?" Forsaken questioned.

"Um..... Yes...." Necromi slowly began, "I seem to be at a lack of town portal scrolls at the current moment...."

"You've got to be kidding me." Ran-ran said in disbelieve.

"No, acctually, I'm not. I must have forgotten to stock up!" Necromi took out his tomb that held his reserve of town portals... It was empty.

"Well, you've been reading off those things forever dude, haven't you memorized what they say?" Forsaken questioned.

"Ehehehe, funny you should ask," Necromi laughed sheepishly and rubbed the back of his head, "Amazingly, I haven't!"

Forsaken and Ran-ran glanced at each other before Ran-ran looked at her watch and thought for a moment.

"Guys, we've been running around for hours. Wouldn't it be best if we made camp and sleep for a while?" Ran-ran said letting go of her crossbow to be held by its strap.

"Yeah, I am really tired." Stated forsaken as he yawned.

Sighing, Necromi agreed and they all settled down for rest. They found a broken down building and set up their beds there. Weapons and armor were put away, and the skeletons were set up to potrol around the three heros and their two pets, to keep them safe from any and all offensive demons. They didn't have a need to set up a campfire, the underground river of flame was enough to keep our heros warm.

Ran-ran and Forsaken fell asleep cuddling almost as soon as they were leaned against the wall, and nearby Necromi fell asleep. Speedy and Doko, eventually tiring of being crushed between the two teenagers, nested inside Necromi's shirt, forgeting instinctual rivalry and sharing a bed together.

Oh, how peaceful it was, in the hero's own little courner of Hell.

Luckily, the minions of Hell have a very bad system of making sure that a particular area of the damned dimension had any demons gaurding it. So what does this mean for our heros? Well, for one, they all got a good nine full hours of pure sleep. Also.... Well, nothing else for _right now_, because it seems that our heros have finally desigded to wake up!

Her eyes fluttering open, Ran-ran streched and snuggled up closer to Forsaken, warm, happy, and blissfully drowsy. That is, untill she remembered where she was, and then she sat straight up, looking to make sure that the skeleton minions were potroling. Seeing that they were, she relaxed, yawning and streching her arms to the red sky while her legs stiffened for a second as her back arched. After a second of holding her body in this ridgid way, Ran-ran relaxed it, and rolled her head around, cracking her neck and carefully standing up.

"Hey, guys! Wake up!" Ran-ran said, looking at her watch, amazed at how long they had been alseep. "Dudes! Up! Now!"

A happy sigh permitted from Necromi as he rolled onto his back, scratching his head and saying,

"No more..... cookies..... Mommy..... Mmmmm...... Butter...."

Ran-ran blinked a few times, momentarily wandering if her necromancer had just gone insane, or if it was just the fact that he was asleep. Turning to her still-sleeping boyfriend, she thought that she might as well try to wake him up.

Carefully sitting herself down in his lap and wrapping her arms around Forsaken's neck, Ran-ran whispered.

"Ooooooy, Zeeeeee-chaaaaann."

Forsaken squinted his closed eyes and said, tiredly,

"Hhhhermm....... What?"

"Waaakye waaakey."

"Hherm, to tired..."

"Oh c'mon!." Ran-ran said, no longer whispering, "Time to wake up and kill stuff!"

"Tiiiired..." Was the only answer she got as Forsaken lolled his head to nuzzel Ran-ran's neck.

Ran-ran sighed and looked over to Necromi, making sure he was still asleep. Indeed, the necromancer was busy snoring, a thread of drool falling from his mouth. Smiling, Ran-ran thinking a fun little thought. Tilting Forsaken's head slightly, Ran-ran bent her head down to his neck, and in a fairly hard mannerism, bit down on the soft, exposed flesh. Immedietly Forsaken hissed in pleasure and was fully awake.

"Good morning." Forsaken said happily as Ran-ran lifted her head from his neck and they kissed.

"Morning. Time to be all awake and standing!" Ran-ran said hyperly, standing up and helping Forsaken up.

"Hey, wait..." Forsaken began, looking around on the ground, "Wheres Speedy and Doko?"

As if on cue, Necromi cried out in a suprised tone, writhing on his back, trying to force his shirt off.

"_Is in my shirt!! ITS IN MY SHIRT_!!!!" He exclaimed, standing up and shaking his shirt. Falling from his cloths, the rat and snake landed, unharmed, both making bee-lines for their owners.

Ran-ran and Forsaken laughed off the experience as Necromi took his shirt off and examined the scratch marks Doko had made, trying not to fall.

"My, Doko, just claw off my skin, why don't you?" Necromi said, minorly annoyed. Doko simply looked at him from her pirch on Ran-ran's sholder, grinnding her teeth before going back to nesting in Ran-ran's hair.

"So, what now, are we going to go get some food or something?" Ran-ran asked, as our heros got their armor and weapondry back into place.

"Well I suppose we _could_ go hunt for some small demon and then roast it." Necromi suggested.

"Oo, like those quill rats back in Act- I mean, back in Westmarch!" Ran-ran happily recalled.

"Hm, well, I guess I'll try it." Forsaken said, and our heros head out to kill breakfast. "I wander if Tyreal relizes his sword is missing."

While back in the Pandemonium Fortress!!

"Got any fives?" Tyreal asked, looking up from his hand of cards.

"Go fish." Cain responded, and Tyreal drew a card from the deck that sat between them.

Ah, the wonder of Go Fish.

After our heros had eaten a fairly large meal of those odd hell crow things – the kind Ran-ran was chasing when they first arrived in Hell- Forsaken got the map, and they were on their way to the river of flames.

"Lookie! The stairs to the lower pits of Hell!" Ran-ran said happily as she pointed to the stair case to the river of flame, that was not to far off in the distance.

Earger to complete the mission, the heros ran to the stair well. The black stone staircase spiraled down as they slowly descended.

As they entered the rivers of flame, a wave of heat hit them all, produced by the great flowing currents of lava that carved a labrynth of solid rock.

"Wow." Ran-ran stated, nodding her head at the surroundings. Indeed, this time, she was impressed

Drawing our heros out of their thoughts, what seemed like the battle cry of a large, and I do mean large, horde of demons. For indeed, approching quickly, looked like a wall of demons. All of them screaming blood thirsty battle-cries, their weapons drawn, and their eyes burning with the need to kill.

Without another word the skeleton worriors attacked, the magi forming a wall for Ran-ran to stay behind and attack from, while Forsaken and Necromi used swords to kill along side the skeletons and iron golem.

For what seemed like forever, our heros fought. Occationally drinking potions when their health seemed to be dwindling away. Necomi cursed the demons and summoned more skeletons when any had died. The numbers of the demons was begining to lessen. With each death of the damned minions of Hell, our heros battle just a step closer to being won.

After what seemed like a forever in battle, the last demon was slayed and Forsaken and Necromi nearly collapsed in exaustion.

"Alright! That was kick ass!" Ran-ran yelled as she ran over and hugged both of them, swaying slightly and giggling.

Doko dashed from her place on Ran-ran's sholder and onto Necromi's as she procceded to lick the blood from a wound near his ear.

"Ah! She's licking me!" Necromi exclaimed as he tried to squirm out of Ran-ran's grip.

"Doko!" Ran-ran said, in a playfully scornful tone, "You know better than to molest people's ears!"

"So, where's Speedy?" Forsaken asked, not seeing the snake.

"Eh, he's kinda cuddling with me in my shirt." Stated Ran-ran as she blushed just slightly, reaching down her armor and drawing out the head of the green serpent.

"_It was _I _who told the Prime Evils of the-" _

Before the ethral form of Izual continued, he was intterupted,

"What the Hell is he still doing following us around?" Forsaken questioned, vaugely remebering the fallen angel.

"_Tyreal was a fool to have trusted me!"_

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know. Now go away." Ran-ran stated bordely.

"_Do not mock me human!!!_"

"I wasn't mocking you! I was just telling you to go away. So yeah. Shoo." Making a sweeping motion with her hands, Ran-ran repeated the 'shoo' part over several times before Izual let out an infurriated- not to mention inhuman- scream before dissapearing.

Just as Izual was out of sight, Forsaken and Ran-ran burst out laughing, while Necromi and the ear cleaning rat, Doko, looked on, utterly confused.

"So, who was that again?" Necromi asked.

"The fallen angel dude, Izual. Went all rawr and told the Prime Evils about the soul stones or something like that, I dunno, I didn't fully listen to Tyreal's speech. Now c'mon! We have a soul stone to make go- BOOM!" Ran-ran explained, skipping off down a path, singing something in japanese.

"Is she always known to so that?" Necromi asked, looking at Forsaken, who only shruged and grinned before following his significant other.

Author's Note: Yosh! I finished this chapter before the New Year!!! Be happy, but give me some reviews!... and a cookie.

Izual: _Tyreal was a fool to have trusted me!!_

Author: Shuddup!! Now put this french maid outfit on and make me some ramen!!!

Izual: _Never_!

Author: Pweaaaaaase?

Izual: _No_!

Author: Meanie -.-


	15. Lesson 4, Teenagers Will Hate Cloths

Author's Note: Put it on!!

Izual:_ For the last time, you annoying child, NO!!!_

Author: Meanie!

Izual: _Take that back!_

Author: Nay I say! Oo, and review! Then gimme your brains in that nifty little collection tray!

Izual:_ What is the perpose of collecting your readers brains? I demand an answer!!!_

Author: Yeah? Well I demand you fit your happy ass into this french-maid's outfit and make me cookies, but you don't see me complaining!!! Now on with the fic!!

Hiding behind a large bolder, our heros sat, and tried to gain back their breath.

"Do you think we lost him?" Ran-ran whispered after a while.

"_Tyreal was a fool to have trusted me!!!_" Izual yelled, poking his head over the bolder, startling our heros and causing them to jump, scrambling away a few feet.

"Damnit Izual, go away!!" Ran-ran yelled, standing up.

"_No! You must first hear my speech!"_

After a short, infuriated growl, Ran-ran yelled,

"FINE!!! We will listen to your stupid god damn testimony of rantingful-fucking-beftrayal! Okay? Okay?! _WOULD THAT MAKE YOU HAPPY_?!"

"Ahh, calm down Squeak!" Forsaken said, patting Ran-ran on the back, prepared to hold her back if she tried to tackle the spirit.

So, for many minutes, the three heros listened to the fallen angel as he discribed his betraying heaven. He constantly went off-topic, and had to be steared back by simple little questions like, 'So, what does Tal'Rasha's puberty have to do with the soulstones?'. Thankfully, Izual finally finished, and was ushered off by several rude gesters from Ran-ran.

Back on their way to Hell's forge, our heros hadn't run into any monsters for nearly an hour. This, coupled with the general akward silence of the area, made our heros just a _bit_ edgy.

After a time of walking in vertual silence, the familiar voice startled our heros,

"Guys!!!! You're here!!!" Yelled a Doom Knight that was skiping twards them in a happy mannerism.

"Mark?!" Forsaken and Necromi questioned at the same time. Before the horde of undead minions could attack, the random Doom Knight took off his helmet and revealed that indeed, it was Mark!

"Oh, I _knew_ that you would come to save me!!" Mark said, hugging both Forsaken and Necromi.

"Uhh, save you... Riight." Forsaken commented sarcasticly.

Mark looked at him questioningly before smiling again and saying, sounding pleasant,

"Well, whatever, but you know what this whole experience has made me relized?"

"What?" Necromi dared to ask.

"That I don't _need_ to be a paladin to impress my father! And because of that I can follow my true dream, to become a bard!!" With that Mark pulled out a small harp and strumed a few strings, singing sweetly, but uslessly.

The three heros exanged glances between each other, shruging, unsure of what to think of the paladin gone bard.

Eventually convinsing the group to let him be their traveling bard, Mark followed our heros to the Hellforge. As our heros finally reached their destination, the demons surrounding the forge attacked.

Again employing the tactic of Ran-ran shooting from behind the skeleton magi, while Forsaken and Necomi were on the front lines, engaging the enemy in melee combat. Only this time, Mark was at Ran-ran's side, singing encouraging melodies, having pulled out a war drum and beating it, making blood pump with the need to exert heavy force on another sentient being.

Nearly an hour passed before our heros began the attack on the Smith, who desimatted the first wave of skeletons that made an attempt at killing him. It was through bone spears, throwing knifes, bolts, and a good iron golem bashing that Hell's smith finally fell. Wordlessly our heros approched the big anvel, and placed on it Mephisto's souldstone. Since Necromi had gotten to smash the Compelling Orb, he handed the hammer to Forsaken, who happily smashed the stone.

"So, C'mon lets go to the Chaos Sanctuary and make Diabo go boom in a very mean manner that causes pain in his giant red ass!!" Ran-ran said, obviessly hyper, as she said it all on one breath. Laughing as she hooked arms with Forsaken and Necromi, she skiped to the music Mark provided.

The path to the Chaos Sanctuary was filled with many demons, and since it was estimated that it would take our heros several hours to reach their destination, they desided to have a litte fun with the demons.

"Ran-ran! Forsaken! For the last time, get your cloths back on!!"

Or, well, Ran-ran and Forsaken did atleast.

"NO! Its fun being nekkie! You should try it!" Ran-ran screamed, jumping over a bolder, smacking a demon with a flail that she had picked up.

"Aww, isn't it cuuute? They're nekkie!!" Mark sang, plucking at his harp.

Sighing, and putting his hand on his hips, Necromi stated,

"Now I know distracting the demons in battle is important, but this is going a bit to far!"

The only answer he got was giggles and an Oblivion Knite charging him. In a few shots of bone spear, the demon fell, even before getting one hit on the necromancer.

Several more minutes of cursing, killing, and distracting demons with nudity, and the horde of demons was killed.

Fortunately for Necromi, our two hormonoly driven teenagers finally agreeed to put their cloths and armor back on, and the quest to find and kill Diablo resumed!

"And no, you cannot fight Diablo nude!" Necromi exclaimed, half aggitated, to Ran-ran who was giggling in a school-girlish manner.

"Hehe, boobs." Forsaken said, making Ran-ran giggle and blush more.

"Necromi, you seem to be under lots and looots of stress!" Ran-ran said, in an innocent voice.

"Well, the fact that we _are_ currently in _Hell_, and that we're on our way to save the world from the Lord of Terror, _yes, _I must agree with you that I am stressed out!!"

"I know a way to help relieve some of that stress." Ran-ran began slowly, and then Forsaken said,

"You need to get layed!"

Ran-ran and Necromi looked at the 'disturbed', as Mark often said, teenager before she smiled and stated,

"Well, besides that, I think that running around naked would do wonders for you!"

Shaking his head Necromi said,

"No! I won't do it!"

"C'mon dude, its a feeling of freedom like no other!"

"No!"

"Its fun!"

"NO!"

"Okay, well I am, its fucking _hot_ down here!" With that, Ran-ran re-stripped off her armor and then cloths, running ahead, drawing a grin from Forsaken.

"Hehe, boobs"

Ran-ran, having run ahead of the rest of the group, was soon out of sight. Our heros searched, becoming just slightly worried when she didn't answer to any of their calls. As they fought through a horde of demonic knites, Forsaken spotted through the battle a familiar figure very close to the river of flowing magma.

" Squeak!!" Abandoning the battle, but slashing one last Oblvion Kight, rushed over to see Ran-ran.

Sitting, happily oblivious to the surrounding battle, Ran-ran sang softly to herself and roasted a marshmellow on a spare bolt, using the heat from the magma flow ot toast the confection.

"Ehm, Ran-ran?" Forsaken asked, a little taken back.

"Yeeeaaaah?" Ran-ran tilted her head back so that she was looking at forsaken upside-down.

"Why, exactly are you roasting marshmellows while were fighting demon knight things?"

"Becaaause!... Wanna mashmellow?" Ran-ran held up the golden-brown marshmellow, and Forsaken looked at it, shruged, and ate it in one bite.

Ran-ran giggled, and the last of the Oblivion knites fell at the hand of Necromi's skeletons.

Mark, being the gayest (I mean happy!) and only bard in the group, pulled out a fluet and played a happy melody one would usually find being played in a medow as a maypole was being weaved, not in the depths of Hell.

"Okay, am I the only one wandering why we have a paladin gone bard?" Forsaken questioned as Ran-ran resumed roasting marshmellows, and Necromi rebuilding his horde.

"Personally," Necromi began, "I never thought of Mark as a paladin in the first place. He was more of the annoying, sword-weilding, goody-goody, kill-the-necromancer, daddy's boy who was only playing paladin to impress his father, in my opinion."

After a short bout of dancing, our heros were off! To, you know, save the world and such!

Author's Note: Sorry if this chapter sucked at all, minor touch of writer's block made it come out in slow, tainted trickles. But atleast I got it out!!

Izual: _BUT WHAT IS THE PURPOSE?!?!_

Author: Dude, shut up. Now, readers, you see that little review button to the bottom left of the window? Click it, and gimme a review! Its not that hard! A little window pops up and you type a few words or so and then submit, its easy. Plus if you don't... Then Izual will eat your brain.

Izual: _What?! Thats absurd!!_

Author: Ah, shut up, ya big and over dramatisized butterfly.


	16. Death of the Game's Namesake

Author's Note: M'kay, this might not have as frequent of updates due to my insperation to write a series of shortish fics that deal with me trying to be a documenterer/ interviewer... and failing in a semi-miserable way. But they should be funny! Now go, an-

Izual: _You were a fool to have locked me in the closet, mortal!_

Author: --;; oh geeze, he got out.

Coming upon what seemed like a huge, roofless, blackened church, our heros paused on their path. The building lacked any signs that marked it as a church, but it still had the same looming quality as many a cathedrel. Immedietly our heros, from the real world atleast, reconized it as the Chaos Sanctuary.

"Wow." Ran-ran said, truely impressed, a horde of butterflies suddenly took flight in her stomache.

With out another word our heros entered, Mark's music oddly silent.

The first wave of demons to come at them was quickly cursed and cut down by Necromi's minions. Ran-ran and Forsaken attacked things with throwing weapondry and bolts. This was a well and good tactic, until a venom lord cut through the barrier of skeleton worriers, and barred down upon Necormi. Quickly drawing his sword, Necromi made sure to use his most potent poison, he tained his sword and reshethed it in the demon's abdomen. The venom lord fell with a pained cry, sliding off the necromancer's blade.

At last our heros made it past the entry hall into the huge room, in the center was a slightly raised platform, inscribed into the platform was a huge, inverted pentacle, with other runes and such around it.

Necromi looked left, then right, then at Forsaken and Ran-ran,

"Well," He began, "Isn't Diablo suppose to be here?"

"He is, we just have to activate the five seals to make him go all 'rawr'!" Ran-ran explained, with an enphasis on her 'rawr'.

"Ah, and where exactly where would these 'seals' be?"

Ran-ran took a quick look around, and after a moment pointed both left and right,

"Two on both these sides, and one up there." She gestered behind Necromi.

"Okay. We'll split up into two groups, Ran-ran and Forsaken, take the iron golem and go that way, me and the rest of the horde with go the other way." Necormi gestured left for the two teenagers to go left, the sounds of not to far off demons resonated from the other parts of the building. "Activate the two seals and then we'll meet up to open the final one together."

"Well what about me?!" Mark exclaimed, throwing his arms in the air, not wanting to be forgotten.

"Um, I dunno, play music in this area and.. stuff." Necromi said before the group split up and went their seprate ways, Mark staying in the area with the platform.

Taking the iron golem with them, Ran-ran and Forsaken began slaying the demons on the side they were on. Eventually the path split, and our dating couple were forced apart, the iron golem running back and forth so as to protect them both adiquately

On Necromi's side, the skeleton's worked franticly to slay all the weakened demons as their master cursed them and killed any stray ones with his sword.

"HAHA! Can't catch me!!!" Ran-ran taunted to a venom lord who was quickly struck down by the iron golem. Reloading her crossbow, she aimed and fired at the demons barely held back by the golem.

"Oy! Squeak! You done killing all the demons over here?!" Forsaken asked as he walked around the courner to see the several venom lords that Ran-ran was 'playing' with, in a twisted game of tag.

"Come back here mortal!!!" One of the demons said in a scratchy, rough tone. All of them had their sword raised and were trying everything to catch the little girl.

Forsaken sighed and shook his head. The demons were completely ignoring him, so, walking over to the seal, he did the same thing he did with the other seal, activated it.

Turning quickly, but not stopping, Ran-ran raised her crossbow, and just as she was about to fire, an inferno shot out from the lead demon's mouth. The heat caused her to let got of the crossbow. Unfortunately for the weapon, the fire engulfed if, dispossing of the wood and part of the leather.

Ran-ran skidded to a stop, tripping, and falling. The demons stopped too. For a moment everything just stopped.

One second past, then another, and Ran-ran's eye twitched, just slightly.

The demons past glances between each other, as if silently congradulating the lead demon. The weren't watching Ran-ran, who's hand felt for the closest thing to use as a weapon, it wrapped around the shaft of something, and without looking at what it was, she swung.

Screaming like a mad woman, Ran-ran swung the flail that she had picked up, the spiked ball it had on the end of a long, three-foot chail connnected with the lead-demon's skull.

In a rage, Ran-ran cut down the rest of the demons with the flail. When the last demon fell, she spent a few seconds blugoning its head before relizing it was dead.

"Ehm, Squeak, you ok?"

"Yep!" Ran-ran turned, her normal happy denemore back

"Right, well, seal's activated. Lets go meet up with Mark and Necromi."

Necromi, his horde, and Mark watched the two teenagers come out from the wall that seperated the way they went.

"Hello people!" Ran-ran stated, skipping happily, swinging the flail in archs.

"Ran-ran, where's your crossbow and why to you have a flail?"

"Some demons flamed my crossbow and in an angry rage I pick up the flail and kinda sorta killed them all in a very painful and bloody way." Ran-ran said, in an all too innocent voice.

Necromi' eye brow rose in minor confusion before shruging it off.

In unison all of our heros turned to the last seal. Walking past the small wall that seperated it from the rest of the building, our heros near-ambushed the demons waiting on the other side. In what was a short battle, Ran-ran bashed in the skulls of more venom lords, still sour over the loss of her beloved crossbow.

After the battle was over, Necromi said,

"You know Ran-ran, maybe we should go get you a new crossbow. I mean, you aren't exactly trained to use a flail, and it would be safer if you weren't in the melee combat."

"Hmm." Ran-ran thought about this for a moment, "Nah. I need a good change in battle style. Plus, I've got a spare."

Turning from her friends, Ran-ran activated the final seal, releasing Diablo to do battle. Without another word, our heros turned and started back twards the platform.

As they walked out from behind the wall, they all saw him, Diablo.

The huge, red demon turned to look at them with a great roar. In a deep, scratchy voice, he said,

"So, it is the pesky travelers that killed Mephisto? Heh, prepare to face your doom, children!"

But before the Lord of Terror could blast them with a wave of inferno, he was met with the atttck of the horde of skeletons and iron golem. In one swipe of his giant clawed hand, the skeletal worriers fell with a clatter. Unfortuatly, Diablo felt the repercussions of his attack due to his being cursed by Iron Maiden.

Ran-ran, Forsaken, Necromi and the horde of skeleton magi attacked feriously, yet not seeming to be effecting the demon lord at all. This was confermed as Diablo cackled, bolts and throwing knifes bouncing off his leather hide.

Sighing stubbornly, Forsaken drew Tyreal's sword and decided to take the holified approched. The sword was soon engulfed in the blue flame, and just as he was about to attack, Diablo turned from the iron golem, and slapped Forsaken halfway across the building.

"Z-kun!!!" Ran-ran cried, putting away her crossbow and drawing out her flail. She grabbed Doko and shoved her against Mark's chest, who held the rat firm. Seeing her significante other give a thumbs up, she turned to the red demon and sprinted.

"Ran-ran?!" Necromi cried, confused, reaching out to stop the girl, but she was too far gone.

Using Diablo's distracted-by-iron golem state, Ran-ran leaped upon the demons back and grabbed one of the many spikes on his back with her free hand, and swung her flail, bringing its ball down, essitially bitch-slapping the demon across his face.

Down where Forsaken was trying to figure out if his spine was broken or not, he propped himself up on his elbows. Feeling an odd sensation in the pit of his stomach, he soon relized that it was growling. He down at his stomache accusingly, and he said,

"What the hell are you doing hungry in the middle of battle?!"

He shook his head and grabbed Tyreal's sword, standing up and looked up to see Ran-ran, riding on Diablo's back, and blugeoning his face.

Raising the holy-blue-flame sword, Forsaken watched and calculated, and when the time appered right, he sent the sword spiraling twards Diablo. The sword embeded itself firmly in the demon's side.

Diablo screamed in pain, throwing Ran-ran off, the skin around the wound burning in excrusiating pain. He fell down on all fours, sending out a ring of fire bolts, knocking down the rest of the skeleton magi and missing everyone else, barely.

Ran-ran got up and ran over to Forsaken, asking,

"You ok?"

"Yeah, hungry as hell and my back hurts, but I'm ok."

"Hungry? How can you be hungry when we're in the middle of battling Diablo?!"

"What?" The theive put his hands up in deffense, "You know I get hungry at random times!"

Sighing, the two returned to the battle against evil. Forsaken taking out his scyth and Ran-ran her crossbow.

Diablo knocked the iron golem away, and turned to Necromi, whispering in a loathful tone,

"_Necromancer_."

But just as the Lord of Terror began approching Necromi, the iron golem, which had a firm grip on his tail, stopped the demon. With a hard pull, the golem sent Diablo rolling, and screaming as the sword in his side went deeper. Grabbing the holy sword, Diablo screamed as the conntact burned his hand, but pulled it out dispite the pain it caused, and threw it away weakly.

As Diablo managed to stand up, his throat was met with the sharp edge of Forsaken's scyth. It cut thorugh the demons veins, and Forsaken was bathed in the hot crimson shower of blood.

Diablo, in a last ditch effort to hinder their party, or some madeness such as that, sent a bolt of red lightning, it flew past Forsaken. The demon died grinning, and just as Forsaken was about to say something smart ass about his aim, Ran-ran's cry cut him off,

"Necromi!!" Dropping her crossbow, she ran past Forsaken an knelt by the Necromancer, who had a bloody hole in his chest, where Diablo's dying attack had landed.

Necromi lay dead, propped up on Mark, who was crying. The two teenagers looked at each other over the dead necromancer's body.

"Dude," Forsaken began, "Shouldn't be able to, I dunno, ressurect him or something?"

"Well, if he pressed escape then he should be back in the Pandemonium Fortress." Ran-ran replied, and both of them snickered at Mark's confusion.

Ran-ran stood up and said,

"I'm going to go get Diablo's soul stone."

She turned to leave, but then remembered something and turned back to see everything the same. Well, except for one little thing.

"Z-chan?"

"Yeah Squeak?"

"Where's Necromi's armor, and weapondry, and colths, and why is he only in undies?"

"He can get more clothing and shit when we revive him!"

Ran-ran sighed, turning back to go get the demon's soulstone.

Back at the Pandemonium Forstress, when our hero's got there, no Necromi.

"So, I take it the beast is dead?" Tyreal asked, sadness at the edge of his voice as he looked upon the dead necromancer who was being layed down by Forsaken.

"Yep, Diablo's dead, now revive Necromi!" Forsaken said, and adding as an after though, "Do you guys have an food around here?"

"Erm, yes, but…. Why exactly is Necromi…. Nearly nude?"

Ran-ran, who was sitting on her legs at Necromi's head, said,

"Z-chan's clepomania got out of hand and he sorta stole them when Mark blinked."

"Heeey, screw you!" Forsaken said playfully.

"Not right now dude, we're trying to get Necromi ressurected."

At this point Tyreal interrupted,

"I'm afraid that before I oblige and revive your fallen friend there are things to be disscussed. Such as the Azurewrath…"

"Uh, what?" Forsaken looked rose an eyebrow.

"His sword, dude." Ran-ran sighed.

"Oh… Uh…. What about it?"

Tyreal extended his hand,

"I would like it back."

"Fuck you! Revive Necromi!"

"Give it back first."

"No! Revive him first!"

Sighing, Tyreal held both his hands over Necromi's wound, a bright light coming from his hands and engulfing Necromi's chest. When it faded, Necromi's chest was healed, unscathed by any wound, no scar left where Diablo's mark was previously.

"There, your friend is healed."

"Good."

"Now give me back my sword."

Forsaken drew the holy blade, looking at the sword and then at the arch angel. A sudden grin was apon his face, and in one quick motion, he turned to the front of the fortress and threw the Azurewrath deep over the gates and deep into Hell.

"Smart ass." Ran-ran said as Tyreal left in disstress to fetch his sword.

"Your point is?"

Necromi's eyes flew open, and he sat up, screaming.

"Necromi!" Ran-ran said happily, hugging her ressurected friend.

"W-w-what ha-happened? Where am I?!" Necromi asked, nervously, trying to remember what had happened.

"Dude, you were killed!" Forsaken said.

"Yeah, you were all dead, and the iron golem is sorta a pile of metalyness, so yeah, you ok?"

Necromi shivered, then looked down and saw the reason why.

"Where are my cloths, and armor, and weapons?"

Ran-ran turned to Forsaken, who sighed and handed the necromancer back his things.

So ended the era of Terror, but still had yet to begin Destruction's strike on Arreat.

Author's note: YEAH!!! Praise me for I have finished this chapter! Aaaand, technically, I could just stop writng the fic altogether. Will I simple leave it the way it is, or will I go on to encompass the expansion?! Only my modivation driven by reviews will deside!!!! Now, REVIEW!!!!! Then gimme a cookie


	17. Vinny, TeaDrinking Necromancer of Cookie

Author's Note: Well, he it is, the beginning of the end for Tactics of Evil! Enjoy this last act, and don't forget to eat many cookies!

In the months that followed Diablo's defeat, Necromi, Ran-ran, and Forsaken all moved into the city of Rathma, with Necromi's parents. They didn't mind the two teenagers, who livened up the house more than it had been in years (or since their last visit, at least).

"_Bored_!" Ran-ran suddenly exclaimed as she and Necromi's father, who soon disclosed after the 15th 'Necromi's dad dude' that his name was Vincent.

"I mean, isn't Baal attacking Arreat yet?! Shouldn't we have gotten word of it by _now_?!" Ran-ran ranted as she paced back and forth.

Vincent watched the girl as they sat in his study. As he sipped at his own cup of tea, we wondered lightly if giving her a caffinated beverage was the best of ideas. Doko scurried about on the tray full of cookies and other goodies, munching happily on a tea-soaked cookie.

"And if Baal is attacking, we don't need to be here! We need to be up there killing the son of a bitch drag queen demon!!"

"Ran-ran." Vincent cut in, before she could continue ranting, in his calm but cool voice, it was the kind of voice that demands respect, and reflects years of accumulated wisdom.

"Eh, yeah Vinny?"

"Sit down and drink your tea."

Immediately Ran-ran sat across from Vincent at the small tea table, picked up her cup and ideally looked at the pale liquid before sipping at it.

Off on the other side of the house, Forsaken was putting sharpening stone to the random spikes and such on the new iron golem Necromi made, after being resurrected from his little bout with death. Being bored, the teen had sharpened nearly every other sharpenable object in the house. But still, with nothing better to do, and a promising battle against Baal and his minions, he had already sharpened _all_ of his throwing knifes, stars, sword, scythe, and multitude of other weapons that he hadn't gotten the chance to use in Sanctuary.

"Forsaken," Necromi started as he walked in, holding a small, messy pile of papers in his hand, "Why are you sharpening my golem?"

"Because I'm bored as Hell! Plus, if he's all sharpened, then he'll do more damage!"

Sighing, Necromi shook his head and looked down at the letter in his hand. Skimming over the contents of the letter, he found the contents to be quite surprising, but then again, his better judgement always trust Ran-ran and Forsaken when it came to predicting the events dealing with the Three.

"Well, I guess you guys were right." Necromi said, crossing his arms.

"Huh?" Forsaken wasn't listening, he was to distracted by his testing of the iron golem's sharpness on a piece of paper.

Necromi uncrossed his arms and said,

"C'mon! I need to talk to you and Ran-ran!" Then, after putting the letters down on a near-by table, Necromi grabbed Forsaken's ankle, and began dragging him to the other side of the house; all the time the thief was kicking, and screaming threats. Finally they reached the study, where Necromi dropped the teen and stated,

"Ran-ran! It seems that, once again, you're ri-OW!!"

"Bitch!" Forsaken stated, propping his broad sword against his shoulder, which just happen to be the place Speedy was slithering about on.

Vincent sighed and said,

"Both of you behave, and Forsaken, put your blade away, inside is not a battle field. Now, What did you want to say?"

Reluctantly Forsaken put his sword away, and Necromi continued,

"Anyway, I got a letter from Cain, he's on Mount Arreat, he claims that Baal and his minions are attacking the mountainside. He wants up to come to Herrogath and defeat Baal."

There was a moment of silence before Vincent spoke up,

"Well, if Baal is attacking Arreat, what in Rathma's name are you three doing here?"

So, not to long after Cain's letter came, our heroes were on their way to the demon-infested mountain, to slay the final prime evil so that they could… well, assembly lead a normal life.

Author's Note: Alright, sorry for the shortness of this chapter, but then again, all transition thingies don't last long, right? Till the next chapter, eat cookie dough!!


	18. Sure, He Can Face Demons, But Not Her

Author's Note: Major plot twist in this chapter. Sorry it took so long to write, but it reflects real-life. Don't be angry at me, its all Forsaken's (the real world one) fault, he's the one who didn't have the… never mind, this isn't my personal rant page! SO go read!

"Hey-oh CAIN!! We're here!!" Came Ran-ran's voice, and the elder horodrim turned to see the girl running at him, grinning madly and sliding to a stop not-to-close to him.

"Ran-ran! Good to see you!" Cain said, embracing Ran-ran who was wrapped in a thick cloak.

"But where are Necromi and Forsaken?"

"They should be coming in pretty soon!"

Cain looked at Ran-ran, then the gate of Herrogath.

"Well, while we wait, why don't I introduce you to some of the people here?" Cain smiled and showed Ran-ran to an armored man, looking to be in his later years and said.

"Qual-ket, I'd like you to meet Ran-ran!"

Qual-ket rose and eyebrow at the girl and said,

"So, this is one of the famousy people that killed Diablo?… Aren't you a bit young to be killing demons?"

"So I'm small, I make up for it with skill in crossbowness." Ran-ran smiled as she and the elder shook hands.

"_COLD_!" Forsaken cried as he and Necromi rode into the falling city.

The next day, after getting settled in and introduced to every one, Ran-ran groaned and pushed her head up from the hard wood table.

"What time is it?" She asked, her mouth tasting like the thousand lavatories of Hell after a chili contest. She looked at empty table, the many, many, many empty mugs and then caught sight of Necromi at the door, he didn't look happy. 'Meh, probably hung-over.' Ran-ran thought, judging by the smell of strong ale.

"Hey Necromi, where's Z-chan?" She, as the met halfway.

"Uhm… Ran-ran." Necromi began slowly, "I truly am sorry to be the one to have to tell you this… But Forsaken…He… Well, ran off with the tavern girl last night, he wanted me to break up with you for him."

Ran-ran was frozen for a second, clenching her fist, her nails digging into her own flesh. Her eye twitched as she muttered,

"The fucking pussy." Then, in a louder voice, one that Necromi could hear, "Where is he?"

"He was afraid of what you'd do once I told you. He fled down the mountain side." Necromi responded calmly, putting a hand on Ran-ran's shoulder.

"Ah… Okay." Ran-ran said, and moved past her friend towards the doorway. But she was stopped as Necromi put a hand on her shoulder and spun her around.

"Ran-ran, where are you going?"

"Oh, nowhere, I was just going to castrate Z-chan and then laugh as he rolls in his blood, screaming in pain and then I'll take his kidneys and sell them on the black market so that I can buy that laptop I've always wanted." Ran-ran spoke as calm as ever, but something in her eyes made Necromi think that she wasn't kidding.

"Uh, no. No you aren't. But what we can do is go and take your anger out on some hordes of demons though!"

"Hm. Tempting, but no." Ran-ran then sprinted away from Necromi, almost getting out of the gates, when suddenly, spikes of bone surrounded her, and she was trapped.

"What the? A _bone cage?"_ She asked her self.

Necromi sighed and approached the cage with Cain.

" I take it she was going to go get revenge then?" The horodrim asked.

"Yeah, she intended on castrating him." Necromi answered, getting a hiss of sympathy for what could have been.

"MEANIE!" Came Ran-ran's voice from over the bone cage.

Necromi chuckled and headed out with his horde to go and kill more demons on the outskirts of Herrogath.

It took Ran-ran quite a while for Ran-ran to break out of the bone cage. When she finally did, she head out to find Necromi, killing her way through the hordes of demons with her flail she found in Hell and a rage that one usually only saw when a woman was PMSing.

Necromi turned from his cursing to see Ran-ran bashing the living snot out of a demon, with a feral battle cry and a scary look in her eyes.

"Eesh, no wonder Forsaken was so afraid to tell her himself." Necromi stated, not knowing that Forsaken was really too pussy in general, sure, he could face down the hordes of Hell, but not the little school-girl, really quite pitiful when you think about it.

"Ran-ran!" The necromancer called to the girl as she climbed up the steps, "You finally got out of the cage!" With that Necromi gave Ran-ran a bear hug.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, we're suppose to kill this demon-thingy up here?" Ran-ran asked, when her friend was done giving her a hug.

"Don't worry, he's already dead."

"Good, then lets go ca-"

"No Ran-ran, no castrating Forsaken."

"Damn… Meanie."

"I know, now lets go rescue some trapped barbarians!"

So up the mountains they went, finding and releasing the trapped barbarians and sending them through portals to Herrogath.

After the rescue party quest was a success, Ran-ran pushed them on farther and farther up the mountain. While they were walking past an area with great many large cracks in the ground, distress cry was heard

"Hey! Is someone up there?!"

Ran-ran and Necromi looked at each other, wondering if they had missed a barbarian.

"Hello?" Necromi answered back, and eventually found himself and Ran-ran lying on their stomachs near a particularly large crack.

"So yeah, now I'm trapped with my foot stuck in a rock. I would just let nature take over for my clumsiness, but first I believe I have a duty to help protect this planet!" The druid in the hole called up to them, chuckling as the story of him heading up the mountain a few days ago, to face down Baal, with a horde of animals and such… When he tripped, and fell into the hole, a boulder penning his arm, making it useless.

"Alright, well, you just chill for a few minutes, we'll devise a plan!" Ran-ran cried happily, putting all the energies that would have used to find, castrate, otherwise torture Forsaken into whatever needed to be done.

" I've got an idea. Let's go down there and I'll show you there." Necromi said, and with Ran-ran's nod of approval, they stripped of their armor and went to the hole.

"Okay, Wolfwind! We're coming down!" Necromi warned as he and Ran-ran carefully slid down, feet against the walls of the crack helping them down in a quick but slow decent. Necromi stopped as his feet hit a shelf of rock, holding him up. Ran-ran stopped and carefully landed lightly on the boulder that was smashing the druid's arm.

"Hello!" Ran-ran waved to the redhead.

Wolfwind looked at Necromi, who said,

"Okay, I'm going to summon a big shaft of bone, it should dislodge the boulder, kay?"

The Druid nodded, looking dirty, bloody, and weary.

Necromi looked hard at the spot around the bottom of the boulder, and soon, then was a small tremor, and then the boulder began to be lifted, and two separate pillars lifted off Wolfwind's arm. With a grunt of pain, the druid pulled his arm from between the boulder and the wall, it looked smashed, mangled, and bloody.

"Okay! That's high enough!!" Ran-ran yelled, the bone pillars rising now to a height of about 20 feet out of the crack.

"Sorry!" Necromi said with a wry smile and with that the pillar of bone cracked, and within seconds had collapsed to where Ran-ran could jump off at ground level.

"Well, we should probably get you to Mala." Necromi said, referring to Wolfwind's injured arm.

"Indeed." Wolfwind replied.

While Necromi opened a town portal, and both he and the injured Wolfwind entered through it to go back to Herrogath, Ran-ran looked down and yelled,

"Hey! Wait for me!!!"

After getting back to Herrogath, Wolfwind went straight to Mala, where he was promptly healed. So, after a follow-up later, our heroes sat around at a table in the tavern. All of them were drinking heavily, especially Ran-ran, and with her flail in hand, no one was in the position to deny her.

"Sho now, I sit here, askshin' you, _whyyyy?!"_ Ran-ran exclaimed drunkenly to her two sober friends.

Wolfwind looked over to Necromi and asked,

"Is she always this way?"

"No," Necromi said, sipping his ale, "She just got broken up with today."

So, Necromi told the whole story of how Forsaken broke up with Ran-ran, leaving out no detail.

"Ouch." Wolfwind said, sympathetically.

While Ran-ran was busy ranting to the drunken barbarian beside her, Necromi continued his conversation with Wolfwind,

"So, would you like to team up with us and kill Baal?" Necromi asked.

"You mean team up with a dirty death mage and a drunken teenager?" Wolfwind began bluntly while his cup was near his lips, bringing it down he grinned and said heartily, "Thought you'd never ask!"

So the night continued, Ran-ran refusing to admit her own intoxication, while Necromi and Wolfwind found a friendly common ground, their contradicting life-styles.


	19. Caves of Pretty Pretty Ice

Author's Note: Hey, due to lack of motivation… And stuff, Tactics of Evil will be updated less frequently. But then again, I am kinda working on 3 major Diablo 2 fics at once; I can't keep all my attention on one! Heck, there was that five minute period where I was considering just not continuing Tactics of evil any more and just focusing on the others…. But yeah, no worry, I'll get all of it typed up before the end of the year… Seeing as it _is_ one of my year's resolutions. Other than that all I ask of you, my reader, is to give me reviews so that I don't go and burn all my New Year's resolutions up… Why are you still listening to me whine? Go read the fic already!

The new morning had brought Ran-ran a new terrible mood, and Necromi and Wolfwind's new game. They all had head out early that morning, heading up the mountain, on a quest Ran-ran refused to tell either of them about, mainly due to her lack of 'happy'.

Through the dim haze that was Ran-ran's hang over, she began to listen to what her necromancer friend and Wolfwind had been saying for the first time since they had left Herrogath that morning.

"-Tree hugger."

"Necrophelliac."

"Savage."

"Poison-drinker."

Both of their voices were calm, as if talking in normal, casual conversion. But before either could continue talking, Ran-ran interrupted them, in a fairly confused voice,

"Hey, guys, are you two, uh... Fighting...?"

Ran-ran looked back and forth between them, as they looked at each other with wry smiles.

"What makes you think that Ran-ran?" Necromi asked light-heartily.

"We were only having a friendly conversation." Wolfwind smiled and looked at Necromi, who smiled also, both of them chuckling at the confused look on Ran-ran's face.

"Oh yeah, haha, very funny." Ran-ran said, bluntly, then snapped her head to look at the horizon, seeing a horde of imp demons heading straight for them. She didn't have to warn her friends of the on-coming danger, as they had already knew.

The skeleton army rushed forth and began slaying the annoying little demons, and the magi held back and attack the ones who had managed to ride atop huge demonic creatures.

As Necromi began to fire off bone spears, Wolfwind took a deep breath and suddenly grunted. His body seeming to go through a transformation, his hands elongated, growing claws, his head became muzzle-like. Necromi glanced nervously at his friend as he fell to one knee, growling in a feral manner, grayish-tan fur growing as Wolfwind finished his transformation into a werewolf.

With a furious growl, Wolfwind leaped from his crouching position to pounce upon an imp, and proceeded to rip its throat out with his teeth.

Ran-ran paused her barrage of bolts to watch the werewolf kill off the rest of the demons.

"Wow, now that is kick ass." Ran-ran said, nodding and smiling.

Hours passed, and by then our heroes had gotten much farther up the mountain, coming upon a cave on the side of what seemed like a great sheet of ice.

"Oooo.." Ran-ran said in wonder as she stood among the dead corpses of the fallen demons all around her, looking up at the swirling multicolored surface of the ice sheet.

"C'mon Ran-ran, you said we had to go into a cave!" Wolfwind said, getting Ran-ran's attention.

"And since you told us that the cave would be on the side of a huge sheet of ice." Necromi stated, making sure his horde complete, and walking to stand beside Ran-ran and Wolfwind. He spread his arms in the direction of the ice sheet and cave entrance. "This is the closest thing we're going to get to what you're looking for Ran-ran!"

Ran-ran then looked at both her friends in turn, then back at the cave, and said as she walked forward,

"I know, I was just looking at the pretty colors."

The two men looked at each other and shrugged, following the young girl, so that a monster wouldn't suddenly kill her.

Entering the cave was like entering a dimly lit prism, and Ran-ran marveled again at its beauty. As our heroes went deeper and deeper into the cave, they killed the demonic inhabitants with near silence between the three of them.

Ran-ran was personally agitated by the silence, ever step she and her friends took was echoed off the cave walls, and the shadows made her think she was in the beginning phases of insanity.

Wolfwind had chose to stay in his werewolf form, and padded along side Ran-ran, knowing that from Necromi's minion's priority to protect the necromancer first, the girl was at a higher risk of injury from ambush.

Suddenly the werewolf stopped and Ran-ran right beside him asked,

"Eh, what's up Fluffy?"

Wolfwind turned to her and said in a rough voice,

"Crying," He gestured with a bloody covered claw down an adjoining tunnel, "From down there."

Necromi looked at Ran-ran and asked,

"I suppose this is apart of that mission you got us into this morning?"

Ran-ran nodded and said,

"Yeah, remember that weird chick, Anya?"

"Yes, what about her?"

"Well, she kinda got all kidnapped by Neolithic-"

"You mean that weird little man that I got into a brawl with that night Forsaken ran off? Then one I kicked the ass of?"

Ran-ran giggled at the memory of the fight. "Yeah, that's him. Well, he's in league with Baal. Fugger gave him some rock thingies -or y'know, something like that- so that he wouldn't have to fight the ancients to get into the Worldstone Keep. So yeah, Anya found out and he kinda... Wait, why the hell am I telling you this!"

Neither of her friends were listening to her scold herself, for they were to busy glancing at each other.

"If Baal is to get to the Worldstone..." Wolfwind began; all of them know the dire consequences of evil breaching the sacred stone.

"Ran-ran, we must quickly finish this quest of yours, then it is absolutely _crucial _that we make it to Arreat's peak with haste!" Necromi said, grasping Ran-ran's shoulders.

"No problem," Ran-ran said nodding, "Lets just go save Anya and then kill Nelithak!"

With a renewed sense of cause driving them on, down to the deeper parts of the cave.

"ANYA! YOU DOWN HERE!" Ran-ran called, cupping her hands around her mouth to amplify her voice even more than the cave already did.

Our heroes continued deeper into the glacial, following the Frozen River and the sound, and now scent of the one Ran-ran claimed they _had_ to rescue before running off to the summit to save the world.

Nearly an hour passed before our heroes finally came upon Anya, and the demon horde that was guarding her. With a feral battle cry, Wolfwind rushed forth in front Necromi's minions, pouncing upon the yeti-like monsters, digging his claws into its flesh and biting with an infectious bite.

The werewolf jumped out of the way just in time to avoid the wave of magical onslaught made by Necromi's mage, quickly followed by the biting blows of the iron golem and skeleton worriers.

As Wolfwind pounced upon the next monster, Ran-ran and Necromi fought down the lead beast with bolt, bone spear, and much iron golem bashing.

When the last beast finally fell, our heroes rushed over to Anya, who was frozen up to her neck in a solid block of ice. Her teeth were chattering, and her lips were tinted a powdery blue. The small puffs of white breath were the only proof that she was still alive at first glance.

"Hey… Anya!" Ran-ran half yelled. Anya seemed to stir, slightly.

Wolfwind stepped forward, and gently said,

"Miss Anya? Can you tell-"

"Oh for heaven's sake, already told you it was Nilethak!" Ran-ran interjected, shivering from lack of physical movement, and not being use to the cold weather.

"Oh… Oh yeah." Wolfwind said, scratching his head, wondering what to do next.

"Ne-ne-ne-Nelithak! He-he-he was th-the one t-t-to do th-this to m-m-m-me!" Anya managed to say, and Ran-ran slapped her for head, silently wondering how conscious the girl was.

"Okay. Well, I'm going back to town to get a potion thingy from Malah, you guys stay here and make sure nothing bites her head off!" Ran-ran said.

With a sigh, Necromi summoned the portal for her to enter, and then slumped down against the block of ice Anya was in.

"I swear, if we don't get to killing Baal soon, I'm going on strike." The necromancer said, pressing his hands to his cheeks, fighting off fatigue.

"Indeed." Wolfwind said, and sat down next to Necromi.

As Ran-ran appeared on the other side of the portal, she sprinted straight into Malah's office, exclaiming as she stopped just in time to avoid tripping over a wounded barbarian.

"MALAH! Anya'sfrozeninablockoficeandweneedapotiontounfreezeher!"

"Child!" Malah said gently, putting her hands on Ran-ran's shoulders, "Breath! Now, what was it that you needed? And please, speak slow enough to understand this time."

Taking in, and breathing out a calming breath, Ran-ran said,

"Okay, we found Anya, she's frozen in a block of ice, got anything to unfreeze her?"

"Oh my! Anya's frozen? I'll get you a special thawing potion right away!" Malah said, and rushed over to her wall, which was filled to the brim with potions off all colors, in bottles of all shapes and sizes.

"Oooo, pretty." Ran-ran said, admiring the multiple of colors, and the way they seemed to glow in the light of the morning, filtering through the window.

"Here you go Ran-ran, good luck." Malah said, drawing Ran-ran out of looking at the bottles, handing her a small, odd shaped bottle of yellow-orange liquid.

"Okay, thanks, bye bye!" Ran-ran waved and turned, running back out of the small medical building, jumped over the small flight of stairs, waved at the blacksmith, then into the portal.

"Hey guys! I'm back!" Ran-ran declared, bounding through the portal and slipping to a stop, almost falling down twice.

"Good, and you have the potion?" Necromi asked, himself and Wolfwind standing up.

"Yep!" Ran-ran held up the bottle and then held it out for her friend to take.

With a nod, Necromi took the potion and approached the frozen youth. Uncorking the concoction, Necromi slowly poured it around the top of the ice Anya was encased in. The liquid seemed to make the solid ice steam almost immedietly. Water ran off in streams, the potion seeming to eat away at the ice like an acid. When Anya's body had finally been thawed out enough, Ran-ran's two male companions caught her before she had a chance to collapse to the cave floor.

Wolfwind nodded, gesturing for Necromi to open the portal.

After Malah established that all Anya needed from that point on was plenty of bed rest, Ran-ran was dragged back through the ice caves for more exploration for the exit.

"You guys!" Ran-ran began, as her two companions continued their frantic search for the exit, "Look, how about we sleep on it? We can always save the world tomorrow! Besides, you two look like you're ready to collapse."

"But Baal must be at the World Stone by now, we have to stop him!" Wolfwind said, desperately.

With a sigh, Ran-ran sat down and pulled out her pack of tranquilizer-tipped darts and blow-gun as her two friends rush past her in a search for the exit.

"Geeze, both of you calm down!" She muttered to herself as she aimed and shot the dart into Necromi's neck.

"Huh? What the- AHH!" Wolfwind cried, the sharp tip buried in his neck.

Ran-ran sighed and looked at the remains of fallen skeletons, and then at the iron golem, who was standing near Necromi's fallen form.

"Well, might as well start a fire." Ran-ran said, putting away her dart kit and then pulling out a lighter, she looked around, not seeing anything to start and sustain a fire with. Huffing, Ran-ran put a hand on the ice wall, and walking down the path of the cave. It took a few minutes, but Ran-ran eventually found herself walking up a slight incline, more light seeming to reflect of the walls.

At the first sign of blue sky, Ran-ran burst into a run, greeting the day and the falling sun.

"Oooo, Nifty." She said to herself, slowing down to watch the far off demons, and the rabbits. There was a significant amount of folaig, plenty for Ran-ran to make a fire.

Turning, Ran-ran looked up at the not-to-far-off sumit of Arreat,

"Oh shit, we still have to fight the ancients!" She said with a groan, her heart sinking. She grabbed up several logs and heading back into the cave.


End file.
